OuttaDeeBox Podcast
OuttaDeeBox podcast is a pre-recorded bi weekly show geared towards supporting former and current inmates and their families in Wisconsin. Our mission is to inform listeners about community resources that can assist them in securing employment opportunities, housing, mental health and substance abuse support, with the goal of reducing recidivism in Wisconsin. We also give listeners and guests the opportunity to share their unique inspirational stories through spoken word and other forms of musical artistry.
OuttaDeeBox Podcast
Thriving Against Odds in African-American Parenting with Eugene Crisler part 1
Strap on your helmet for an insightful journey with Eugene Crisler. We swap tales from the road, where the rubber meets more than asphalt—it meets life's unpredictable challenges. Eugene's harrowing recount of his motorcycle accident is a stark reminder of how safety gear and training can be the fine line between life and death. But the conversation doesn't end with the thrill of the ride; Eugene opens up about his world beyond the bike, where he empowers fathers through his work with the Urban League of Greater Madison and Focus Interruption, fostering paths to employment and training.
As the miles roll by, we tackle the less-discussed role of African-American fathers in nurturing their children's mental health within sports and education. I share anecdotes highlighting the need for culturally informed mental health support and the lessons of resilience and identity. This heartfelt dialogue underscores the transformative effects of empathy and understanding in educational settings, ensuring African-American students have a solid support system to thrive against the odds.
The personal becomes universal as we navigate the complexities of cultural communication within our families, contemplating the contrast between our childhoods and those of our children. We underline the importance of embracing our kids' burgeoning interests and fostering an environment where they can explore their identities freely. In a world craving connection, the episode culminates with reflections on service, faith, and offering unwavering support to our children. Join us in this intimate conversation that transcends the open road and delves into the heart of family, identity, and community.
what's up everybody? This is your host d star here with eugene chrisler eugene, eugene, how you doing, brother I'm doing good, brother.
Speaker 2:How about yourself? I can't complain man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't wait to take my bike out. To be honest, man oh yeah I got a 2020 polaris slingshot okay, the three-wheel joint so I never get to ride it. So it's like because, because I live in Wisconsin, it's either winter too cold or way too hot or raining, so it's like I never really get to enjoy it like I want to you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was actually thinking about riding my classic 350 road infield up here today, but yeah, it's too cold for that.
Speaker 1:Is it too cold?
Speaker 2:I want to. It's like 40, right, but yeah, it's too cold for that. Is it too cold? I want to right, yeah, it's 40, and I was gonna bundle up and be like forget it, let's just do it. But you know I'm hiking like a 51 minute ride.
Speaker 1:So and people don't understand. Man, when you ride open air, it takes a lot out of you it does it really do like it'll take the wind out of your sails, like if you ride like an hour or 45 minutes by the time you get off it's like ugh. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then not only that, you're very more vigilant on the bike because one, you're on two wheels and you have nothing protecting you. You're outside right.
Speaker 1:So you really got to be paying attention.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really got to be paying attention, especially from where I'm driving from. You're looking for deer or raccoons. I actually ran over a raccoon.
Speaker 1:How fast.
Speaker 2:Like 70 miles an hour. Whoa, by the grace of the Most High, I just ran right over it. My wife was behind me, following me behind another car, and so I just kind of let the Most High just take care of it. And I just rode right off. Wow, didn't skip a beat. Yeah, I was lucky yeah, I was right. Now there's a couple times, brother, I should have been dead especially on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine, because I'm on three wheels and if I hit a bump too hard I go flying, you know what I mean like I'll catch air a little bit and then it's trying. You know what I mean? The I'll catch air a little bit and then it's trying. You know what I mean? The tracking, traction controls start to go in like so you kind of swerve a little bit so I can just imagine hitting a damn, uh raccoon you know what I'm saying that'd be.
Speaker 2:That's crazy yeah, and the crazy thing is, before that even happened a couple years before that. That happened last year, but a couple years before that, about 2016 17 last year, but a couple years before that, about 2016,. 17,. I was on a 92 750 crotch rocket. It's a Honda and rush hour, 8 o'clock in the morning, I'm coming back home from a jujitsu practice and a car just jumps right in front of me and hits the brake. I panic, I hit my front brake too hard and I flew off at 50 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god did you have a helmet on, oh, helmet, gloves, jacket, I I'm, I'm all the safety kind of guy, so, like, safety gear is important. I even had steel toe boots on and, uh, that saved me. My gloves, my helmet, my jacket, my boots, that all saved me. And uh, jujitsu saved me too, because I went over the handlebars like an endo and I did a forward roll in jujitsu, that helps you to embrace and impact for the fall. And so I had a messed up clavicle. That was about it. Yeah, it was God's been in my life the most God's been in my life for a long time and blessing me to keep me here.
Speaker 1:So the third time you met OJ was Shout out to your man what's his name Dave Chappelle. Right For the real so for the people that don't know you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I'm a father of five. I work for um, the urban league of greater madison. I also work with focus and disruption. As um for urban league, I do more of the fatherhood group, so I facilitate a fatherhood group and connect my fathers to employment trainings, uh mock interviews, uh services if they want to get into other trade, electrical things like that. We also have a cdl program.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of things going on at the urban league, but my main focus is with the father accountability, responsibility, accountability program I don't like calling it that. So um, but that's just the title of it. Um, we have a group of guys that come in that I work with, with the county or guys who walk in from off the, off the street, and we just, really just have a group of guys that come in that I work with with the county or guys who walk in from off the street, and we just, really just have a group to talk about things that we need to talk about as fathers, as men, especially as black men Some are incarcerated men and women and so we try to just give them the tools to help out, especially when they get recommended through the courts for child support services to help out, especially when they get recommended through the courts for child support services. I try to give them the opportunity and a chance to not have to get themselves see themselves incarcerated because of not paying child support?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's important. So, as a Black father, why is it important for you to actively consider and prioritize your children's mental health within the context of African-American upbringing?
Speaker 2:It's important to me because I know the people, as when I was younger I couldn't see it, but as I'm an adult now I saw how much they try to feed into me mental health, support and having that, but they didn't look like me. There were people sitting in a room trying to figure out or help me figure out my emotions, but they didn't look like me so they couldn't understand what I was going through. And so for me as a black, as a father, I'm really mindful of my son and my daughter's mental health, because I know how important and how fragile the mind can be. So it's really important to make sure that, even in sports, my child, both of my children, my 16-year-old son, he's in wrestling. My nine-year-old daughter, she's in wrestling. They're doing great at wrestling and even in that mind frame, that context, they love sports, they love to win. So how do I make sure that they have a level where when they lose, they don't freak out right, it's okay to lose, you're learning.
Speaker 2:You know, the other day, my son, you know he fought his heart out. He lost, he was crying. You know. I go in the room, in the locker room, I say what are you crying for? Cause I lost, I said I excuse my french. I said, son, I don't give a damn if you lost. What I care about is that you bought your heart out. You're learning, you're placing, meaning this is your first year ever and you're a sophomore and you're wrestling. You're placing. Other people or other kids are not placing. You're doing good.
Speaker 1:Not only that a lot of kids start when they like seven eight yeah like they super, duper young and they come up in it. Um one, I grew up with this dude. Um. So I grew up in stoughton and stoughton is like notorious, or have been notorious for years uh, for their wrestling home of the vikings yep, the vikings, uh, and their wrestling program is, you know, legendary throughout the state.
Speaker 1:So I actually came up with this guy. His name was Eddie Blumenthal and he was a monster, him and his brother, all state champion wrestlers. You know what I mean? Yeah, I understand. You know it's a tough sport and my brother wrestled too. So, yeah, man, it's a really, really tough sport. So how do you navigate conversations about race, identity and mental health with your African-American children, especially in today's social climate?
Speaker 2:The school is made of two different towns Broadhead. Judah and my son wrestled for that team and there's literally you can count on a hand, one hand how many black African-Americans are in there. Every day we're faced with that. So I have to guide my son and talk to him and have these conversations, and he'll talk to me too, about you know what he's dealing with, whether it be with the principal, how the principal acts, and there was a day, a couple, like a week ago, where my son would. We would have to have these conversations on how we engage with the teachers, how do we engage with friends and what's going on in their situations, right, so like looking kind of both angles, what it looks like for us and what it looks like for individuals that don't look like us interacting with us, and how they're supposed to communicate.
Speaker 2:So I had to sit down with one of the teachers and a counselor is frustrated because they always want to point out what he's doing wrong instead of how are you communicating with my son, because we might have a different way of communicating and understanding, and you're saying he may be being disrespectful, but he's just expressing himself, which he should be able to do, and so how are you saying that he's not going to get in trouble for something? You're calling me because something happened's? Let's have a conversation on how do we actually communicate with each other and understand, instead of just saying that this person or this child is doing something wrong when it has nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2:It's just a way they might view how they are dealt with, how they deal with things because of their upbringing or the things they've gone through, like they didn't understand that my son has mental you know, has been having mental challenges because he's had childhood trauma. So I've had the conversation with them and tell them, like you need to probably be mindful of that. It's not just a behavioral thing, it's something that you might be triggering him and that's why this teacher is having an issue with him, because all the other teachers are not. How is he passing all his classes but yours? And I've understand that I have to also tell my son.
Speaker 1:So that means that it has nothing to do with the information, that he can't process the information or he's not getting it. It's the delivery.
Speaker 2:It's the delivery. It's definitely the delivery, and that's what, what. And they thought I was going to come in there. This is probably why the principal didn't want to show up, because they thought I was going to come in there as a mad black man and sit there and puff my chest not coming there talking intellectually, with respect, yeah, you know, just trying to get to the root of the problem exactly which brings me to my next question.
Speaker 1:It's like what role do you believe culture, heritage and traditions play in supporting the mental health and resilience of african-american children?
Speaker 1:now, that's, that's deep right, because essentially that's that's what we're talking about right, you know it's like there's a disconnect and maybe that disconnect is we just come from two different types of cultures, two different types. You know, we speak that same language, but our culture is so different that there's a disconnect when it comes to actually communicating with one another. So what you would deem is disrespectful, we would just deem normal, or vice versa. Trauma plays a big part in that. So when you, when you're talking to somebody um, some people don't like. When you yell at them, some people are fine with it. You know, some people don't like. When you get too animated, some people love that. You know what I'm saying. Like I always say you know, my wife is a loud woman, she's Puerto Rican, she's super loud, but their culture is so close to our culture that it's like it's acceptable.
Speaker 1:You know we all had aunts and uncles. That's over the top loud.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Super loud, and I'm a loud person too, so it's like it's not a big deal to me, but to other people in other cultures it might be somewhat offensive.
Speaker 2:You know, I've had those situations happen too, where they're like why are you speaking so loud? I'm not speaking loud.
Speaker 1:That's just how I am. This is regular, right, I'm just regular, or why are?
Speaker 2:you doing all this Because black people are passionate about what they speak about, and so now you're saying that we're aggressive, but that's not the case. So then they talk about oh well, this is how you publicly speak, right? But like, how do we actually build a camaraderie with the people that we're actually, you know, talking to or you're talking for, building relationship with? Right, you got to understand where people's culture is, in their background and their upbringing or the, the way they were taught, brought up, like lived experience, right, or what they say, um, learn behaviors, right, we have these behaviors that we learn and that becomes normalized in the household. And we're so diverse in where we live, right in the area of Madison, right in Wisconsin, well, particularly Madison, we're very diverse. So you have different cultures and there's some cultures that, like you said, are very similar, right, and we just talked about it too, with our children.
Speaker 1:Like our children speak Spanish, they might receive something different in a different language right, like you tell her to come here in English, she just might look at you, she might come. But like you tell her to come here in english, she just might look at you, she might come.
Speaker 2:But if you tell her to come here in spanish, then she's gonna take it a little bit more serious and she right, the, the percentage, uh, the percentile of her actually coming if you say it in spanish is far greater than if you say it in english, because I and I I feel like when you said that reminds me what my, my daughter's mom she she's from Mexico and she explained to me too, like there's sometimes when things are said to her that she can't register right away as quick as she can if she's speaking in English or in Spanish. So I get that and that makes total, complete sense, and sometimes the brain just has to register it a bit, especially if you don't the the language that well no, no, it makes a hundred percent sense, man, and I'm uh, I follow you.
Speaker 1:It's just funny to me, you know, to me, because the way that my kids are growing up is so parallel to how I grew up. You know what I mean. It's it, it's parallel, but it's well. I'm trying to teach them kind of like the way that I grew up, you know. So that's the tradition and culture, but the circumstances are so much different. I didn't grow up like this at all. I grew up single parent, home, section 8, poor. You know what I'm saying. And fortunately my children don't have to grow up like that and so. But I think sometimes they miss key life lessons by not growing up poor. And maybe that's just my own trauma, you know what I'm saying. Like, I'm thinking like if you had it a little bit harder, maybe you would value it a little bit more, but you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you telling me this, but I, you know, I don't, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that dad, but I don't know what you don't know. Yeah, you telling me this, but I don't, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that Dad, but I don't know nothing about that. I wasn't raised like that. And then I always tell them like, hey, you got to appreciate your father. Man, I grew up without a father, so I know how it feels to not have a father and I'm doing the best that I can with no experience and no one to even draw any type of inspiration from, because I didn't, I didn't, I don't even know what that looks like. So, but again, you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 2:So they all they know is you know, dad, you just identify what most of probably I'm. I'm there with you. I've been in a foster home. I didn't have my father with me. I had mentors that tried to play that fatherly role, coaches and stuff like that. But you're right, like when you grow up in poverty, you know, I did that with my mom, my uncles. We had to be in the same house, you know, cousins, we slept in the same room, all that stuff. We had to go that way, right, because then if we didn't, somebody was homeless.
Speaker 2:So family brought family in, and so, like I feel what you're saying and I think what I do to help navigate that with my son, so he can actually feel that is that I have. I have to let him choose. I have to have him make a choice, like today. I'm like son dang. This would be a great time for my son to come with me to this podcast because you know he can get one little bit of exposure and then see more of what dad does. But he was like dad, I'm going to go hang out with my friend. Well, he just wrestled all day yesterday, you know, and so I have to. I don't want to push my son to do something that he don't want.
Speaker 1:Because he's not going to get what you think he's going to get out of it, because his heart ain't in it.
Speaker 2:His heart ain't in it and he don't just know yet Right. So I have to let him go through whatever he's going through. So then when he can come to me and I have to build that relationship with him because, mind you, a lot of people don't know my son's 16. I hadn't seen him since he was four, up until the time he was 14 years old. So there was a 10 year gap there for my oldest son and my oldest daughter.
Speaker 2:So I'm also getting to learn that's trauma. I'm also getting to learn my son more and also what he needs and how I need to be able to navigate his mental, you know, and give him that space. But I also need to make sure that he knows that who rules the roost, you know whose home he's in, so that he knows like this. And now it took a while, but the example and getting him, you know, constantly getting on him about chores, constantly making sure that he understands why he's doing chores, constantly understanding why it's important to get good grades, constantly making sure that if he wants this, this is what it takes.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And walk him through that. I will drive an hour, two hours away and go see him wrestle. I don't care if it's on the YouTube channel, I'll go see him wrestle because I know from what his coaches said and what he says he wrestles better when I'm around. When you're there, so I make that a point because I didn't have that.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I had two people in my life, and that was my brother and one of my foster dads that actually came to my football games when I was younger, but I didn't have my uncles or my dad or my mom anyone there. So I'm trying to feel that I'm actually healing the little boy that was trauma, that had suffered trauma. I'm talking about me, my childhood trauma, by making sure that I'm there for my son so he doesn't have to deal with that. So I'm actually that's how I'm healing myself.
Speaker 1:So how do you address systematic changes and racial injustices with your children while also struggling their mental health and emotional development?
Speaker 2:I empathize with them, I try to ask them questions, I give them outlets, I let them express to me what they are going through, because then I can actually help try to navigate that. So now I have someone that I can talk to, that I know that is a sports psychologist. So I got my children connected with a sports psychologist.
Speaker 1:Now Wow, I never even knew that existed, but it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shout out to Carmen. She's from the UW, she's a sports psychologist and a taekwondo instructor, so some works that we've been doing in the community together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I spoke to another guy His name is Roy Boom and uh, he was telling me about the transition from playing you know sports to regular life. You know, and how that, you know, is a struggle. He's used to being big man on campus, he's used to playing an NBA and you know living that lifestyle. You know working out all the time and every. His whole life is consumed with sports and now that's over, that part of his life is over making that transition. You know what I mean, so I can see how a sports psychologist would make sense. So, as a black father, how do you prioritize your own mental health while balancing the responsibilities of parenting and addressing social pressures?
Speaker 2:I'm a big advocate of mental health services, so self-care is important to me. My self-care does involve me going to the gym, hitting somebody in the gym in a controlled environment, but also going through the ringer in the gym where we got these things called shark bait. So you're in the ring. You got probably like 10 guys and you got to go through all of them for five minutes. So they might come in every 30 seconds or there's five minutes. So you got three rounds, three five minute rounds. All 10 of these guys are going in a minute every time for those three five minute rounds. So that builds, right. This is what um um pressure makes diamonds, right? So when you're mentally and physically exhausted and you know that you can't, the cage is locked and you're in here with all these people men and women who got skills and all they're waiting for you to be tired so that you can't move as quick and as strong as you could when you first started. Now your mental has to start going in there. Fight through this, fight through this, fight through this.
Speaker 1:It's mental toughness right.
Speaker 2:How do you develop mental toughness? Well, my mental toughness is to gym me being able to talk to a therapist or even a brother or a mother, someone that I can confide into, that doesn't have mental that I can actually just kind of shut off their opinions, right, like my mother, she can always have an opinion. That's just a mom. But having someone outside of family that can actually, you can just kind of like release and then you don't have to worry about the backlash, right, and then that's a journal. This is quite a few things.
Speaker 2:I go on my motorcycle because you, although you're paying attention, you're very vigilant, just like driving. You're always thinking so like that's my decompressed. That's why I love living out, this outside of the city and have that half hour, 45 minute drive, because it's to yourself, it's to myself, and now I can actually really kind of like decompress and see everything as a big picture and question some things that I might have. You know that I have to question, I have to question myself. A wise man doubted often and changed his mind because he knows things change just as the time change.
Speaker 1:You know they say this thing. They say it's okay to talk to yourself, but it's not okay to answer yourself. I'm like, well, I must be doing something wrong because I talk to myself and answer myself. I'll be like man, should I do that? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I should do that. So that's talking to yourself, and answering yourself, or do you hear voices?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I hear my voice I'm the one that's saying it and I'll be in the car by myself having full conversations, going through it. You know what I'm saying. Like going through my day, going through, you know, decisions that I made or maybe upcoming decisions that I need to make, just really working it out. You know, if I can't get in contact with my wife, then you know I'm like, ok, I keep my own counsel. You know what I mean. So you know. With that said, it's like what are some of the misconceptions or stigmas surrounding mental health within the African-American community that you believe need to be addressed?
Speaker 2:The stigma is that if I can't express to myself or I can't come to a conclusion that, hey, I have, I'm suffering from a mental breakdown, I'm suffering from PTSD and I need help. The stigma is that you're supposed to just not talk to nobody. But we also understand that when pressure comes, pressure busts pipes. If you don't have someone that you can confide into and say, hey, this is what I'm going through, it gets stigmatized. Because then people are like man, I don't want to hear that. Man, I got my own problems.
Speaker 2:Right and I got my own problems. We all got my own problems. You're soft Right and I got my own problems. We all got our own problems. But the thing is how I settle my problems is by helping other people settle their problems, like my mental health, because it helps me and I'm sure you're the same way. When you see somebody that you've helped or you see somebody that you've talked to or spoken with or had an interview with, and you see them, you know grow from that right that in itself, just like any coach, they feel a sense of worth, they feel a sense of accomplishment, they feel a sense of that gratification, that endorphins that come then right, because you know that you had just a little ounce and it's addictive.
Speaker 1:Yes, once you help, like one person, it's like man that felt you do it again. You're like man, it felt just as good. You know what I mean. So it's like it's like a drug. Like when you first take the drug. You never actually get as high as you ever did when the first time you take it, but when you helping people you get that same feeling every single time. Every single time you know it's like you don't have to chase it because you know it's there. You know somebody say, hey, I need help with food, and you give them the information to get into a food pantry and now they got food in the house. You feel great, you know. And if you do the same thing the next day, you're going to feel just as great as you did yesterday. You know it doesn't like you don't get numb to it. You know my wife she's she works with homeless families. Before that she was working at Big Brothers, big Sisters, so she just helps. You know families, you know in need. She's been doing it for over 10 years now.
Speaker 2:Bless her heart for that.
Speaker 1:And she loves it. You know what I mean. She loves it. She, her job, like her job, satisfaction is just through the roof. The, the power of service. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right Servitude. That's what we're doing. We're serving right, we're slaving, but we're doing it in in a it, in a way that we are doing it, want to do it right. We're doing it for the most high. You know, our higher power tells us to right.
Speaker 1:You know what's crazy? I always tell people, man, I'm like I help for my own selfish reasons. I say that because I get my blessings from God, because I know that I'm helping somebody. So, I try to help as many people as I can and try to give out as much game as I possibly can and do the right thing as much as I possibly can, because I know God like it and he's going to bless me for doing that. So it's like I don't need nothing from you.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to gain favor, you know, with somebody else that can give me way more than what you can ever imagine. So it's like ever since I've been down this path, I just continue to keep getting blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And then all of a sudden you're like for me. I say I question it. You're like what?
Speaker 1:really why me Like that survivor's remorse?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like, is this a setup Right? Is Like that survivor's remorse? Yeah, and I'm like, is this a setup Right? Is this real Right? You know, and but I really want to. I want to touch base on this real quick too, because you talked about how do I help my children pretty much navigate their own mental health. Right, and there's, there's.
Speaker 2:I have five children, so every child is totally different. Right, one of my children identifies as non-binary and I know that, understanding the mental health people who are in that community suffer from a lot of mental health, and so you know, mind you, my daughter, I hadn't been in my daughter's life up until two years ago, for 10 years, and we built this relationship. And this is why I'm saying this, because it's important for a parent to have an open relationship with their children, let them have that open communication and let the children speak, because now my daughter, instead of going to her mom, she comes to me because I can listen and understand her, although we may not have, you know, agree on everything but you're my daughter and I respect you, no matter what.
Speaker 2:Whether you're my daughter or not, I'm going to respect you. And we had that conversation, although it was uncomfortable. You got to have uncomfortable conversations so that you can get someplace right and we got to a place where she can just call me anytime she wants, facetime me and really cry on my shoulder and say, dad, this is what I'm going through and I can express to her that I understand that and this is why I understand that I might not agree with something. You don't have to agree with everything, but just be there and being there is just listening and being and learn how to navigate the love that you have for your child without having no opinions to it. I really think I want to. If I said anything today, that's one thing I definitely want to make sure that I put out there.
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