(EP.70) Nobody's Perfect...

Chuck: 0:10

Welcome back to another episode of let's Just Talk About it podcast. 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. So, with that being said, I'm excited to have special guest Vicki Brown on with me today when she shares her experience growing up as a child in the city of Norfolk, Virginia, and also what she had to go through to get to where she is in life today. So you don't want to miss this amazing conversation. As a matter of fact, do me a favor go and grab your husband, your wife, your children, or even call a friend and listening together to my conversation with Vicky on let's Just Talk About it podcast. Hey, let's jump right in. Welcome back to another episode of let's Just Talk About it podcast Today. I'm excited to have special guest Ms Vicky Brown on with me today. Ms Vicky, how you doing today? Fine, thank you. Good to have you on, good to be here. Yep, how's your day going so far?

Vickie Brown: 1:15

Can't complain yeah.

Chuck: 1:17

Ms Vicky, I love to jump right in to have those genuine conversations with genuine people just like yourself, you know, to share a portion of your life's journey, because I believe everybody has their own unique story to share that could possibly help somebody else, I'm a good or someone not so good but we all have our own unique journeys. So, with that being said, first question is where are you from? Norfolk?

Vickie Brown: 1:39

Virginia.

Chuck: 1:40

Got you. How was it for you growing up in Norfolk? It was awesome, good. It was good. I got you Mm-hmm. So being a younger person, being a teenager growing up in that time, how was that era for you? Because the era's changed, you know, people go through different times, so how was that for you growing up in Norfolk?

Vickie Brown: 2:00

It was fun for me Coming up around people in the projects. I learned a lot. What not to do, what to do, yeah, mm-hmm. And you learn with the people whose parent let them go.

Chuck: 2:14

Different places, yeah, yeah.

Vickie Brown: 2:18

Your parents would let you go.

Chuck: 2:21

Yeah, you was restricted, I got you. Yeah, yeah, you wanted to go, but be proud, yeah, so everybody else having fun. So you're like, what about me? Right, right.

Vickie Brown: 2:31

Yeah.

Chuck: 2:32

Yeah, how did that affect you? Because sometimes young people could grow up restricted from a lot of things and then they get older it's like, ok, I'm free now, so let's go. Right, I'm going to make up for lost times. Yeah, so how was it for you? When you finally, like you know, you were old enough to leave home, I couldn't go.

Vickie Brown: 2:50

Couldn't go, I couldn't, wow, I couldn't go, I couldn't do the things that they did because I was taught better. Yeah, and when you're taught better, you're not going to step out, yeah, out of your safe environment, right, but you've been taught. But your grandparents, your mother has taught you and you know you can't do it. Yeah, I don't care how good it was, how you know how fun it is, you can't do it.

Chuck: 3:14

Wow. So when you finally realized, ok, I'm in this place, I'm not going to go beyond the boundaries of what I've been taught, so was it a time where you said, ok, I can leave now, you know, did you get married? How was that for you?

Vickie Brown: 3:33

Well, I got married. I felt like that was the answer to my prayer. I got you Because when I was 12, I prayed and asked God to send me my husband, Everything that I prayed and asked God for and asked him to do in my life. He has done it, Got you and I can't complain. But I am upset. I am a little angry because of what has happened and transpired in my life.

Chuck: 4:00

Okay.

Vickie Brown: 4:01

During the past and, over time, got you Because a lot of things have been subtracted from my life due to things that have happened, because of the decisions someone else has made over my life.

Chuck: 4:12

Got you Because you are affected because of somebody else's choices Right In your life, right that you feel like you had a setback or Right A setback Talk?

Vickie Brown: 4:20

about it. Well, my brother, when he got on his feet and got married, had all his children. His wife had a nervous breakdown and he lost his kids to foster care. He told me to come to Chicago get all his kids out of foster care. I got all his kids, me and my mom, and you know how the devil steps in when he gets jealous, and I didn't know anything about foster care and all this kind of stuff.

Chuck: 4:47

Right, right.

Vickie Brown: 4:49

So when you do what's right by God and Dr said I don't know, I didn't know how I was going to do this, me and my husband, and my husband, he told me. He said how are we going to do this? You know, I said, well, my check, your check, we're going to take half of what I have, we're going to take half of what you have and we're going to let God do the rest. And we did that, mm-hmm. And you know, when you put God in what you're trying to do and don't do on your own, he stopped seeing you and all you're doing, what is right, got you God. You know he can do the rest and all what we have done, me and my husband and God, he has stopped doing it. He has did all these things for us.

Chuck: 5:28

So is this pertaining to the kids your brother's kids that you took on for him? Yes, wow, so you're taking care of your brother's kids. So something happened that, yes?

Vickie Brown: 5:39

Yes, wow, I have seizures. When it started, when I was, I guess, eight, and my mother, she didn't realize it. I told her I was having headaches and then my daddy realized it. He didn't know what was going on.

Chuck: 5:58

He gave me a drink, wow, Because he felt that was going to stop the seizures. Right, right, okay.

Vickie Brown: 6:07

He's from the country, so you know he took a drink and have everything. Home remedies Go ahead, right, right. So, um, he gave me a drink and now I think that hurt more than it helped, right, but still, you know it's not the seizure.

Chuck: 6:23

So taking that drink back then at eight years old probably created something else Another problem yeah. Yeah, so young.

Vickie Brown: 6:33

Yeah, right, right. And when I, you know, when I took over those kids, my daughter told me he said I'll use a book. I think you should go and relinquish your custody of those children because you could, um, get real tired and be at my niece's and nephew. They had ADD, adhd and I wasn't aware of that. Wow, my son was born natural and my family? We don't know anything about it. We didn't know anything about ADD, adhd, right, right. And I think that's one of the things that come. You know, these children, this natural thing is going on with these children right now, absolutely so, um, I'm constantly wearing myself, I'm repeating myself to my nephew and my niece and, uh, this is where I'm me out. When you have to see you, you can't get stressed and you can't be worried.

Chuck: 7:25

You're to flare up.

Vickie Brown: 7:26

Yeah and uh, I was just. You know, at the time my mother was taking care of my stepdad. He had cancer. My mother, she was taking care of her brother. He was great. Both of them were great and both of us. My mom, she was tired. I was tired. My niece, you know, she was getting weak problems. She was about 12 years old. She had the energy. Yes, yeah, yeah, and I'm coming up to school. Because she's putting this bow long and they're going to school. I said, oh Lord, my mother, she's calling me to help my stepdad and my uncle. And they, they called me out.

Chuck: 8:04

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, yeah.

Vickie Brown: 8:08

So I go to rings my cousin and her, I go to the courts and fall out and they're going to tell me that I fought five police officers.

Chuck: 8:17

You fought five police officers.

Vickie Brown: 8:19

I fought five police officers, my eyes closed. Wow so this is the thing that I've been dealing with since 3606. Wow so, 3606 is the day in a year that happened to me. And you know, I just went there to that place to relinquish my custody and fell out. The hospital was just down the street, got you.

Chuck: 8:44

And so when you did that, you reacted and they say you fought five police officers. So what was the outcome of that?

Vickie Brown: 8:50

I was taken to an abandoned house and I don't know how I got there. These people shot me up with some drugs Try to say that I was on a cocaine. They said that drugs in my body and I go to this place with $5,000 jewelry on my body, didn't get it back. They stole all my stuff and I'm hurt behind this because my sister, my oldest sister, she's dead and gone and she had this thought made for me and it bothers me because this is all I had left for my sister but I couldn't get it back. And these people, they lied.

Chuck: 9:28

They lied on me and the sheriff on the case Mckay yeah, Norfolk Mckay, yeah, yes, I remember you told these young deputies regardless of what these people do, they come through there.

Vickie Brown: 9:42

they will make more money sending us to jail. And that's exactly what they did.

Chuck: 9:48

Wow.

Vickie Brown: 9:49

That's exactly what they did to me. I mean how can I, how can I have never in my life attacked no one in a seizure? I got a year and seven months Wow.

Chuck: 10:00

So you did a year and seven months in Norfolk City Jail 8-11?.

Vickie Brown: 10:03

No, no, no, no, and it was a crazy jail.

Chuck: 10:06

What's that? Eastern Eastern state, eastern state, okay, yes.

Vickie Brown: 10:10

Yes, to really make it sound like I had really did something to these five officers. I didn't know this. If you put your hands on our police officers, that's automatically five years. I guess he opened my eyes just for me to see this white officer Open his eyes, to see him. He looked at me in shock and in awe. He couldn't believe it what they were doing. A dog attacked me in black deputies. They were attacking me, fighting me. You know, it's not all white people, mm-hmm, this was black. Wow, that attacked me. And if we're doing what McKay told them to do, Wow.

Chuck: 10:53

So they took you to this abandoned place and they say you fought five police officers. Yes, wow. And they put you into Eastern State for a year and seven months.

Vickie Brown: 11:03

Mm-hmm.

Chuck: 11:03

Wow. So when you get to Eastern State, like what was that, like how was that experience?

Vickie Brown: 11:09

I think the women that was there, I think, got for them because, um, when I got there, they schooled me. They said don't take that medicine that day, because the women that was there, yeah, they were on 10, 13 bottles of medication and it made them go crazy. They was telling me when you go to take that medication, put it behind your tongue. Wow, because all those people there didn't that crazy, didn't that sick? Yeah, but I didn't take that medicine. Everybody there's that sick. It's like when I fell out and had a seizure and I told the woman in the jail that I had seizures and I can't get up there on that top bunk, she told me get that anyway. And I fell in and I cracked my right shoulder. Wow, and to this day I Am having pain in that shoulder. And when I went to the doctor, he told me he wanted to put a rubber joint in my arm. And another man he was my acting grandfather. He told me he's a big kid. Let me tell you something. No, no, doctor, put nothing in your body, he said, because I, he's a rock and I cox. And he said, um, they want to do the same thing to me, he's. I've been having pain in my body ever since and I stayed with that man Two days before he put a gun in his heart and shot and killed herself Before he died. He told me the decade I'll say you might. This house was 300. All I told on some of the glistens, I can't do that because I don't want to problems with your family and I left. When I left I knew music is a mother was gonna shoot yourself. I took his gun. If I know he was gonna do that, I would never. I would never move. I've never sold my house, you know, because I've always hung around older people. And there again, there wisdom, everything he has told me is stuck with me and it saved me. I'm not gonna put nothing in my body, you know, because all that stuff you know it's gonna wear.

Chuck: 13:05

So let me ask you all that you went through, you know the eastern state, you know mr Gleason and All these experiences you've had with seizures how does that affect you, like Mentally, you know, cuz that leaves you like a trace of trauma sometimes when you go through things and and it likes affect you mentally. Does that affect you in such a way now? Yes, wow, talk about that again. You never know who's listening. That's that's been through trauma and a whole lot of stuff and they think something is really wrong or they've done something really bad. But not knowing is just the things that they've gone through in the past that makes them think like that. Talk about that, your experience with trauma.

Vickie Brown: 13:49

When I was arrested, they went into my house and checked my house for drugs. Why would you do this, mmm? And, yes, it left me traumatized. Wow, I'm leery of a lot of things. Mm-hmm, I have everything in my car for protecting but a gun. So you know, you don't know, you know. Yeah, that's why I constantly laugh at constant look at comedy, because when I'm constantly around somebody's funny, you know, like these things is just in my head, right, and the people that I'm around.

Chuck: 14:26

Makes you feel better. Comedy, yeah I got you laughing, I got you. Yeah, that's a good way to deal with stuff. You're dealing with it in your own way, you know and it's the way I deal with it. Everybody has their own coping mechanism. You know to deal with different things, so I get it yeah.

Vickie Brown: 14:45

And see, you know, these are the things that we have to be. We have to be, you know, very cautious of, because what happened to me, don't think it can happen to you.

Chuck: 14:55

Absolutely, and I think you know that's the whole thing about this platform. Let's just talk about it podcast, because I Think we go through things and people have been quiet for so long about what they went through. So when you look at people, it seems like they never gone through anything. But everybody has their own story. Everybody has a journey. Mm-hmm, yeah, so this is what it's all about creating that platform so people can talk about it, you know release what's going on in their minds, you know yeah, another thing.

Vickie Brown: 15:24

You know I want to thank Norfolk City Jail Very much for doing what they did to me because, you know, after my son had graduated, I had a plan I had, you know, I had planned to go back to college, which I did, because my husband, he came out the Navy, went back to DC to work, because you know, there's not a much money making this area right. And as my son finished high school, because I didn't want to be in college and he'd be out the street doing something, I wanted him to finish school, go to college. Yeah, and you know, and I don't want him out in the street while I'm in college and doing what he wanted to do, because I told him. I said look, you can go out there and sell drugs if you want to. I'm going to be the one that can turn you in. I said because you're more important to me in jail than they in the street.

Chuck: 16:15

Yeah, wow. Let me ask you this. So if you had a chance to go back and talk to the younger Vicki Brown, what would you share with her to prepare her for today?

Vickie Brown: 16:27

I would do what I want to do at age 12.

Chuck: 16:31

Why you say that.

Vickie Brown: 16:32

Because when you are 12 years old, you attain a lot of things at a younger age. That's why most parents, the children, take piano at six. Yeah, because when you are a baby, you retain more, you retain more, that's right yeah. You're absolutely right. See, when I was eight years old, my mother took me to a doctor you know, they're old and they came up believing that doctor. And what I don't understand is I had more faith than my mother and I was sitting there in the doctor's office and that doctor was telling her that I was going to be college material and God was sitting there telling me yes, you are. And I went to school anyway and I got a certificate. But he would think your mother would have more faith, but she believed that doctor. I couldn't understand, where is your faith in God? God gave him to. You know, he got me back, so he carried me to court 3,6606, and told a lie to me and he said, yes, I would fight in a seizure, but he lost his license and also he got all the Medicaid patients.

Chuck: 17:48

Let me ask you this, though what do you want people after all you've been through in your life? What do you want people to know about Vicki Brown today?

Vickie Brown: 17:57

She's strong and regardless of what all I've been through, I don't let it get me down. I keep going. I keep trying to find ways to keep going.

Chuck: 18:07

you know finding new avenues to keep going Right. Yeah, I got you. What encouragement would you give the young people right now? If you was to run into somebody that reminded you of yourself growing up, what would you say to that person?

Vickie Brown: 18:22

I would tell them don't give up, don't stay at this dead end job. Yeah, I would tell them you know, go to school, go to college and put God first and you know you pray Because you know he's the one that's going to take you where you want to go. He's everything Right, you don't need man for nothing, nothing.

Chuck: 18:45

Got you. What's your thoughts on depression today? Depression, yeah. So much mental illness out here, so much, you know, anxiety people are going through. What's your thoughts about, you know, depression today.

Vickie Brown: 18:58

You know what? All this stuff is coming out here from the news media is being programmed and now mad, and I don't lock it in. That's right, I like that. I don't lock it in. If y'all want to go along with that stuff, y'all go along with it.

Chuck: 19:14

But I'm not going to lock it in. Yeah, I do.

Vickie Brown: 19:17

I got you.

Chuck: 19:18

Yeah, I think that is a lot that has to do with it.

Vickie Brown: 19:20

We you know You're not getting out because you got to just throw something out yesterday.

Chuck: 19:24

The mind is not to spun, it is we absorb. Yeah.

Vickie Brown: 19:28

If you stay around these negative people, you take that stuff in. Your body's going to absorb it, it's going to receive it, it's going to take it in and your body's going to start feeling like all those things that you are receiving.

Chuck: 19:42

That's good. You're right. Our minds do absorb. It's like a sponge, the more you keep it. It is yeah, it is yeah, yeah. Wow, got you. It was good having this conversation with you, miss Vicki. I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate your trust.

Vickie Brown: 19:57

I appreciate you because you don't want to tell you something. Don't stop doing what you're doing, because you know you will be surprised to know that people have so much on their mind that they should let go.

Chuck: 20:08

Let it go. Yeah, therapy, yeah, need to talk about it.

Vickie Brown: 20:11

They got you, but they just don't know. Do you have business cards?

Chuck: 20:16

Yes, I do.

Vickie Brown: 20:17

Well, you need to put them out there. Give me a few.

Chuck: 20:20

I will do that. I appreciate that. Please, please, and I appreciate your conversation. I appreciate your transparency. I hope you know, through you sharing your journey, that other people be inspired to you know, come on and just talk about what they've been through. It's sort of like a therapy session that we could just talk about where we are in life right now, because everybody goes through things, everybody, you know hats ups and downs. You know, we all, you know, in the same pot.

Vickie Brown: 20:48

We just yeah, we just don't acknowledge it.

Chuck: 20:51

We just we wear it well, we are functioning, but we are dysfunctional on the inside.

Vickie Brown: 20:55

Exactly, Exactly no that is Perfect.

Chuck: 20:58

Nobody.

Vickie Brown: 20:59

Nobody, I mean, you know I can say I'm thankful for everything I've been through Because you know, if you want me going through all this stuff, you know you ask why me, why not you? Right. But I'm thankful for what I've been through because you know, hey, I didn't know, you know I didn't know how I was going to. You know, get through all this, but I'm thankful for everything I've been through.

Chuck: 21:24

Right, right.

Vickie Brown: 21:25

Wow, amazing. I'll tell you. If I tell you you know how I got through and how. And if you ask me why I'm I thankful, because you know what he said, I'll bless you in the presence of your enemies and I've been blessed Got you Wow, amazing, amazing, because every time, every time somebody does something to me and he knows my heart, he knows I have an intention to do what is right. But you know what? I didn't have to get out there and go from Rob Peter and to pay.

Chuck: 21:57

Paul Right.

Vickie Brown: 21:58

Right, god made a way. Made a way Because he knew my heart. He knew that you know my mother, my father, my sisters, my brothers, they all said examples for me, wow. And he knew that I want to work and that hurt me. You know what these people did to me. I wrote my congressman. They didn't even, they didn't even reply. They come around for your help and then when you need their help, then I get for you, yeah, and in what you want. And the great boys, they constantly take advantage of you.

Chuck: 22:30

Yeah, wow, what an amazing conversation. I really appreciate your time, your energy and, again, your transparency, ms Vicki Brown, and coming on, let's just talk about it podcast and sharing your unique journey with the world. So again, thank you so much and I appreciate you being on.

Vickie Brown: 22:50

I appreciate you and no stop but you're doing. I'm praying for you to explode.

Chuck: 22:54

Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.

Vickie Brown: 22:57

All right, all right.

Chuck: 23:00

Wow, what an amazing conversation. Shout out to my friend, vicki, for having this dialogue with me. You're not the listening to her story. You never know what a person had to go through just to get to where they are in life today. But what I'm realizing is that our journeys are put there to help someone else get through their struggles and to realize that they're not alone, that there's more people out here going through a similar situation. So shout out to you, vicki, for sharing your journey, as always. Thank you so much for tuning in to let's just talk about it podcast, and please check out my website. Just Google let's just talk about it podcastcom and then hit that subscribe button to receive all the new episodes every Friday. You can also find me on Facebook. Just type in Chuck L J T A I, which means let's just talk about it. So, as always, until next time, don't hold it in, but let's just talk about it. Talk to you soon.