Ep.71- Solitary Confinement Wasn’t the End: How Sonny Found His Way Back to Love

TRANSCRIPT

Conversation with Sonny

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Giselle. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking with Sonny Von Cleveland, who is a nationally recognized motivational speaker, author of Hey White Boy, conversations of Redemption, and a leading Voice for Trauma survivors. After overcoming 18 years in prison, in a childhood marked by severe abuse, Sonny now dedicates his life to helping others heal, find purpose, and rise above their past.

Please join me in welcoming Sonny. Hi, Sonny.

Sonny: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I so greatly appreciate you and thank you for such a wonderful, warm introduction.

Gissele: Thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m super excited to talk to you. I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about what led you [00:01:00] to the point where you ended up in solitary confinement.

Sonny: Sure. That was, a domino effect, I suppose, from being in the position that I was in in my life. This was 2008, so I had already had about nine years in prison, goes to 10. it’s just a very angry young man lost in a world of gang banging, self-absorption, you know, self-centeredness.

I had. Just previously found out that my oldest son’s mother started to have an affair with my brother and that they, she was pregnant by him, and that they were going to be taking my son and I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. And he was gonna raise him as his own. And I really, really worshiped my brother, right?

growing up. It was just he and I in a single mother household. And he was always kind of my protector. And when that happened, I, I don’t [00:02:00] know, it wasn’t about her, it wasn’t about the fact that they were having an affair. it was the betrayal from the one person that meant the most to me, the only family member that I had left.

 you know, there’s a million women in the world. It’s actually 5 billion or so. You know, and he chose that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to do that. Yeah. And that, you know, like what that, what that does to the kid, to my son. Like the fact that you made my son believe he was, his father until, you know, he was 12 years old.

And it just, it was a conglomerate of all of those things. And then somebody had stolen everything outta my cell at one point while I was at work in the chow hall. I worked in the kitchen, and, I just took my anger out on him. And so it was unfair for him. those circumstances led me to being put into solitary confinement, which ultimately changed my life.

So, in a sense, I’m kind of grateful that my brother did that while it cost me, my son, it gave me the opportunity [00:03:00] to. Be who I am today. It turned completely, turned my life around. Going to segregation at that time. Right? Yeah.

Gissele: Yeah. And my understanding of your story is that you had also been betrayed by other family members, so that must have been particularly difficult in terms of your childhood experiences.

Sonny: It’s a thing. Yeah. You know, my first victimizer was my uncle. growing up losing my whole family because when I had talked about my molestation and my mother had had called the police and turned him in, he was sent to prison for 15 years and, and my whole family fell apart. So, to betrayal from a family member, I would always wanted, family, right?

 the first, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10 years of my life, we had that family structure, right? There was grandma’s house, there was cousins, there was aunts, there was uncles, there was a family. And then after that it