Transcript
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Welcome back to another episode of Lets Just Talk About it podcast.
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I'm your host, chuck, and if you're here for the first time, this platform was created to give genuine people just like you an opportunity to share a portion of your life's journey.
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So, with that being said, today on this episode, I have Christopher Life" Willars on with me, where he shares how it was growing up in the windy city of Chicago, Illinois, and also what led to a 144-year prison sentence in the state of Virginia.
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So, hey, you definitely don't want to miss this amazing and motivating conversation today.
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As a matter of fact, do me a favor, go and grab your husband, your wife, your children, or even call a friend and gather around to listen to my conversation with Christopher " Life Willars on Lets Just Talk About it podcast.
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Hey, let's jump right in.
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Welcome back to another episode of Lets Just Talk About it podcast.
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Today.
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I have Christopher " Life Willars on with me today.
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How's it going, man?
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Man, it's going good.
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Thanks for having me.
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Yeah, I appreciate you.
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Yeah, A friend of mine shared your TikTok video where you were sharing your journey about.
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You know your sentence, and so I decided to reach out to you.
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Man, you responded.
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So again, I appreciate that.
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Yeah, man, you responded.
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So again, I appreciate that.
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Yeah, no problem, man, I'm always grateful for the opportunity to, kind of you know, let my voice tell my story and hopefully educate others for sure.
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So you know.
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Thanks for extending the invite.
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Absolutely man, I love to jump right into my interviews to have those genuine conversations with genuine people just like yourself, just to share a portion of your life's journey.
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And, chris, I love to start off with this question when are you from?
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Oh man, I'm a Chicago native, born and raised.
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Yeah, windy City kid, just classic blue collar up bringing it for real Midwestern.
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Yeah, you say it's cold out there.
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Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, especially when the wind blowing It'll get cold out there.
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It's cold in a few ways too, not just the temperature.
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I heard about it.
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Yeah, yeah you know, so how was it for you growing up in Chicago?
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You know, growing up I always tell people started off cool.
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You know both parents in the house.
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We grew up or I grew up initially, you know, in a household that was ranch style, single family home, cul-de-sac.
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But you know, things change, things happen, you know, and for my parents they were growing apart for a couple of different reasons and then put in some financial hardships and, you know, eventually that led to them splitting apart and then, you know, eventually leading to a divorce.
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So growing up I had two parents that were on the outs and my living conditions because, you know, with one parent out the household started to drop.
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So I went from this house to a townhouse, to an apartment.
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You know where I started to see the graffiti and you know that.
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And then we were on.
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You know we were on Gunnison Ave and the project at one point, yeah wow.
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So being a young guy and seeing your parents separate did that have a major effect on you?
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Like you know, in your decision making, yeah, most definitely man I'm.
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I was one of those kids.
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I would excel, excel, scholastically when it came to grades.
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I was always somebody that excelled there.
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But I was hyper, you know.
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I needed a certain type of attention, you know, like a lot of kids.
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You know that's deep, yeah.
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And then I'm a young man, so I'm growing, my mother's having to work two jobs, you know, to make sure we got food and shelter.
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She's not able to be hands on with me and I definitely needed that strong male figure at the time to kind of rear me in Because with him being out in the household, my mama working two jobs, me getting older, that's what led me to get up in them streets and you know there's a lot of us do and that's why I speak to the things that I do so this to do, and that's why I speak to the things that I do to this day.
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I started to inadvertently look for what I was missing in the household, out there in the streets, from a male figure looking for that, oh yeah for sure yeah yeah, and I always say, man, you never know who's listening, man, some you know a mother who's listening and not really understanding what her son is going through and they may be missing that father.
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You know, just to hear you say that it puts some, um, some understanding to that that these young men need a male figure in their lives.
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You know, positive, oh, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, to direct them.
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Yeah, so growing up by the time you left home, how was that like for you?
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You know how old were you, yeah.
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So, um, coming up through high school, I was one of those kids that used to get in fights, and so much so that eventually I got kicked out of school and ended up getting sent to a basically like a military ran program we call it like a shock treatment program, ok, and it was ran by the Army National Guard and it was six months long.
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So when you were only home for two weekends out that whole period, right, and it was either go there or I can go to court because I had hurt a kid pretty bad in school, right, and my mother see it as an opportunity, because the whole time I was I was battling.
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You know, I didn't necessarily want to be this bad kid getting in fights, but I was angry, my pops was gone.
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You know what I'm saying.
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I didn't have the new clothes, everybody.
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So you know that's what led me to the shock treatment program and really that was the point of me being on my own because, uh, I was able to graduate and excel in that shock treatment program.
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Um, so much so that I graduated, in their terms, valedictorian student team leader, um, victorian student team leader and walked into yeah, and walked into a military career at 17.
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A lot of people sometimes when I put that in my post they'd be like you can't enlist at 17.
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You can, you just got to get permission, you got to have your guardian sign and say that you can, you can wow.
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Yeah, and.
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I went from there and I walked into the military.
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I was going to be into the you know Marine but an Air Force recruiter said hey, man, you scored high enough on the ASVAB to go Air Force.
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So you know, I went straight from that shock treatment program being home for a few weeks, right into the Air Force.
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You know military.
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So you know, at 16, I was pretty much on my own and by 17, I was out of state, you know, on a military base.
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You know, with my own vehicle, my own place to live, doing things.
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That you know kids my age weren't necessarily doing.
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Got you, yeah, yeah, so you had some freedom and some money, yeah.
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Some that I weren't ready for.
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Right.
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Some freedom and some money.
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Yeah, yeah, that I wasn't ready for, but yeah, I had that wow got you, so you're in the military, so how long you staying there?
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I was only in the military.
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I was in there for less than two years.
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I was in there, yeah, I was in there.
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I enlisted at 17.
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Uh, I was in there during 9 11.
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I'll never forget the morning of it and know I was in there for a little bit longer before getting in trouble again and at 19, I was given a general discharge under honorable conditions.
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Because here I go once again.
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I had a problem with my hands getting in the fights.
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I was good on base I was an E3, you know, at a young age and it was excelling in my career.
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But off base I was at those clubs where I wasn't supposed to be fighting over girls and it was like, look man, you're good here but you're not out there.
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We got to let you go and that yeah.
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So that was kind of like the actual conversation, yeah.
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Wow.
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So where do you go from there, man, when, when he you know, put you out?
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how does that?
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Yes, right.
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So uh, uncle Sam, put me out, right.
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Some people say I put myself out.
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You know however you perceive, but, um, I went, ended up not being able to stay in Chicago, but I went to Chicago briefly, um, but what had happened was my mother had moved from Chicago to Virginia, where her family was from what part of Virginia oh, uh, staff.
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We was out there, stafford County, fredericksburg yeah, city of Fredericksburg, um, we was out there between DC and Richmond on 95, that's the best way I can put it.
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Yeah, we was out there.
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When I went out there, I remember because I was stalling in Chicago for a little bit till I ran out of money, living in hotels.
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Finally, I had to come out there to Virginia and I was miserable, you know, I went.
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I was this kid that had made his way into the military, was traveling, had a vehicle, all that, yeah, to losing it all, having to restart and, even though I was only 19, feeling like it was the end of the world.
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Wow.
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So, yeah, looking back, I was dealing with depression, anger, anxiety, all those things through childhood years, and now it was just, yeah, it was just increasing.
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So when I went to Virginia, it was just a miserable situation for me because my mother had moved in with my grandmother, my uncle also lived there, my cousin and I had to share a room with my cousin.
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I was just, I was just over it, like I didn't want to be there?
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wow, let me ask you this.
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So now that you can look back and think about you were depressed back then.
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How did that look back then to you?
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How did that feel, if you could remember?
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Yeah, excuse me, that's a great question.
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I'm glad you asked that.
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I'm a mental health advocate and I'm a youth mental health advocate and I love explaining to parents things that they may not see or may overlook or may not be paying attention to.
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But, in short, there's so many, there's a wide range of symptoms, but for me what it looked like was somebody that was outwardly when the light was on them would shine, but inwardly felt dark.
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I felt them inside.
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You know, I would try to make my mother happy, but inside I was hurt because my father wasn't around.
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So it was.
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There was a constantly tugging, but overall, on top of that, there was an anxiety that was starting to be driven.
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I grew up in Chicago.
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You hit gunshots, you lose friends, so yeah.
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So now we've got anxiety working in there, all right.
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I grew up in an environment where there's gangs, there's different, you know, there's drug use, there's all these things going on.
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This, this feeds, it impacts your mental in a negative way and as a young person that doesn't know how to convey that they, this is impacting them, this is messing them up, that's good man, right.
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And then you look into the fact that sometimes we don't know how things impact us until years later, which is the tricky part.
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That is tight.
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But yeah, I was that classic case from what I see because I deal with so many young people nowadays.
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I was that classic clinical case of you know, teenager, you know, uh, teenager, you know, young people, depression, as I call it, ypd right, you know, you in that range, uh, especially the 18 to 22 window.
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Okay, when you start, when you start to transition out of those high school or those teenage years where people are starting, if you haven't found your way yet, it gets a little bit worse.
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But it starts in high school, it starts in elementary, you know, it starts back there.
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So, yeah, what?
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yeah, what is that look?
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I know I keep pushing it, but what is that look like man, Like a young kid is 20 and so they stay at home with mom and dad oh man.
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But how, how do you, how do you get depressed when you don't have to take care of anything?
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you know what I'm saying if I'm saying yeah yeah, no, it's yeah, no, it's great, because it's one of those questions I love to answer for the youth because, for whatever reason, there's a consensus there's a percentage of adults that think kids have nothing to worry about, they shouldn't be depressed.
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But we don't know the type of pressure that they feel in in in this period of time versus what we felt.
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When you just fact, when you just factor in social media alone, the average person, adult or young, you get up in the morning, you get on your phone, you see all types of things you start inadvertently comparing yourself to.
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Now.
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You put that in a younger environment, you would do with them.
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Teenagers, oh man, there's a bigger pressure there.
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Not every kid, not every kid, is going to focus on their parents in the future.
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Some kids they focusing on that peer pressure in the school, they focusing on why the girls don't like them or the guys don't like they, focusing on they ain't got that gear.
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So everybody, you know they're not getting that motion, as they say that it's different pressures.
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So for me I can't speak for anybody else, but as a 40 year old man, who am I to say that what stresses them out isn't stress.
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They entitled to feel what they feel, towards what they feel.
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So, yeah, man, their pressures is different.
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We may not understand.
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Yeah, I think our job as adults or older, you know, whatever mentor is just to be there for them, not to always answer the questions that they may have, but just be support, just listen.
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I spend a lot of time just sitting there with them, that's it, I sit and let them talk.
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I let them talk.
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Sometimes I don't even provide no answers, but they know they can come back and talk some more.
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It'll come.
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It'll be a moment where it's time for me to speak, but first I just want to hear you.
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I ain't even got to understand what you're saying.
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I might not even speak the language, but I just want to show you that I care enough and I believe in you enough and I'm concerned enough to at least just sit with you.
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It'd be no difference if it was somebody that spoke another language, from a different part of the earth, and I seen them in trouble.
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I'd sit with them too.
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Wow, wow.
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So it's a different day, so we can't deal with kids, the way our parents dealt with us.
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You know what I'm saying.
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We gotta no.
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Yeah.
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I'm gonna give you an example real quick.
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Our parents used to say go ahead, ride bikes, be back 12 hours later, just be back before the lights come on.
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No phone, no, no, none now would you do that with and this ain't a question you gotta ask.
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But I know one thing I'm not sending my kids out absolutely and saying yeah it's a different world, it's a different world.
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So we're going to acknowledge that in one place.
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We need to acknowledge that in all places in regards to our youth wow, that's deep man.
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I appreciate you sharing that man.
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You gave you know some um, some education on how we are to approach the youth today.
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Sometimes we just got to listen.
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We don't have to have all the answers, just listen to them, you know, share their emotion.
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Yeah, yeah, they're bright, they're intelligent, at the end of the day, that the answers are within them.
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We just got to sit there and help them, guide them till they find it out.
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The best answers are found within them they'll find it there, wow we just got them.
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That's it.
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Wow, they know what's right and what's wrong.
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They feel it yeah man switching gears.
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Man, I appreciate that switching gears.
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Um, you spoke about being sentenced to 144 years, right?
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Yeah, how did you get to that place?
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man like we just touching on.
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I was somebody that was angry, depressed teenager, didn't have outlets, didn't have, didn't have any.
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You know positive people around me outside of my mama, you know, my grandma, anybody.
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You know I didn't have anybody connect to communicate with outside of my older cousin, his friends.
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They became my social circle.
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I was new out there in Virginia, got you, you know he was closest to my age, though 10 years older.
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He had partners.
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They liked to drink I didn't mind drinking.
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They liked to smoke I smoked.
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You know they like girls, I like girls, you know.
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So they let me hang around and basically being around and being in an environment, it, but basically being around and being in an environment, it was just really negative man.
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They would lead me astray and I can say that in a way that I hold myself accountable to everything that's ever happened in my life.
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But at the same time, peer pressure is real, manipulation is real and man, young people, are easily moved you know, left or right, so yeah, so I was just, was just, you know, dealing with my cousins.
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They were into the streets, or at least acting like, or my cousin was acting like he was in the streets with his home boy, you know, portraying a life, portraying an image.
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And then one day I found myself in the midst of a conversation where they were talking about going to commit a crime and, you know, I kind of just fed into it.
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You know, we were arguing about it.
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I said y'all ain't really about that life, y'all sitting here talking.
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You know, I'm tired of it, I'm angry.
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And they say, oh, you want to see?
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And I said, yeah, and that was.
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You know, that was the minute things started to go downhill for real, on the moment, wow man, I brought that up because kids need to hear what those emotions can lead to.
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You know what I mean.
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Oh yeah, a life of incarceration where nobody can help you.
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You know what I mean.
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Yeah, yeah, no question, I'm trying to appease to my cousin, you know, show off for them, or show them that I'm hard, or you know whatever it is in the moment.
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And at the same time, like I always tell young people today, who are you trying to impress Because?
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And at the same time, like I always tell young people today who you trying to impress?
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Because, at the end of the day, we all trying to impress somebody.
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People be like I ain't trying to impress.
00:16:49.529 --> 00:16:54.394
Listen, if the right person come in that room, you gonna stick your chest out and chin up.
00:16:54.394 --> 00:16:55.716
You know what I'm saying.
00:16:55.716 --> 00:16:57.346
So who are you trying to impress?
00:16:57.346 --> 00:17:04.828
You know, for me, back then, I was trying to impress people that didn't care about their own life, didn't know my value, didn't you know?
00:17:04.828 --> 00:17:10.578
So don't them the wrong people to impress right yeah wow, so you're incarcerated.
00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:15.314
How did that environment go for you being the first time being in there?
00:17:15.314 --> 00:17:17.420
How did you, you know, maneuver through?
00:17:18.422 --> 00:17:28.036
well, first time incarceration, incarcerated right first I got to let people know I was sentenced to 144 years for robbery.
00:17:28.036 --> 00:17:29.865
I was the driver.
00:17:29.865 --> 00:17:33.546
No weapon was used, that was real.
00:17:33.546 --> 00:17:34.489
It was a BB gun.
00:17:34.489 --> 00:17:39.287
Wow, nobody was physically harmed and that was it.
00:17:39.287 --> 00:17:40.845
I was still given 140.
00:17:40.845 --> 00:17:43.826
I never left the car, never went into the establishment.
00:17:43.826 --> 00:17:47.146
So me going into prison.
00:17:47.146 --> 00:17:48.833
I was all anger at first, mm-hmm.
00:17:48.833 --> 00:17:56.169
I'm a first time offender who refused to testify, got testified on and ended up getting all this time.
00:17:56.169 --> 00:18:02.924
You know it was initial shock but I rolled into prison the same way.
00:18:02.924 --> 00:18:05.328
I rolled into jail extremely angry, got you.
00:18:05.328 --> 00:18:10.075
So each state is different, you know each system is different.
00:18:10.075 --> 00:18:13.801
Where I was at, you know I'm not going to say I use, I use it as leverage, you know.
00:18:13.801 --> 00:18:15.744
But I was known in Chicago.
00:18:15.744 --> 00:18:24.541
So when you, when you're known in Chicago in Virginia, right, you automatically people are gonna look at you a certain way yeah, yeah.
00:18:24.962 --> 00:18:26.405
So not only that.
00:18:26.405 --> 00:18:28.336
Early on, you know, I was one of them.
00:18:28.336 --> 00:18:31.464
I was zero tolerance win, lose or draw, because I didn't win every time.
00:18:31.464 --> 00:18:32.596
But I was just again.
00:18:32.596 --> 00:18:44.803
I was that angry kid that grew up into a young man that never had that part of him dealt with, no therapy, and now he's in an environment where it's the perfect setting for it.
00:18:44.803 --> 00:18:47.260
This is where violence reigns.
00:18:47.260 --> 00:18:56.545
So you know, my early on in my penitentiary bit was a lot of fights, a lot of confusion, trying to figure it out.
