"Imagine if the worst day of your life defined you forever"
--Michelle Cirocco
None of us is perfect, and almost everyone has done something that can still embarrass us at the thought of reliving our own worst day. Michelle Cirocco was a shy 12-year old who had been shuttled to a new state and into a school where she didn’t fit in. Then her mom died 10 days after a leukemia diagnosis, and Michelle was left rudderless. Eventually, the tough kids took her in and made her feel she "belonged" for the first time. Some of them sold drugs.
She says, “Selling drugs wasn’t just easy money; it gave me status, confidence, and control. Suddenly, I wasn’t the awkward kid anymore; I was one of the cool kids.” And she was good at it. Cirocco , who now is CEO of The Televerde Foundation, was a good manager even then. By this time, she was a junior in high school, her dad had remarried, and she had to find housing. She found a place, worked as a restaurant hostess and sold drugs on the side.
Eventually, she settled down, got married to her high school sweetheart, stopped selling drugs, and soon became pregnant. Life was good, but after the second baby was born, she began to want more. A succession of bad decisions followed. She was dealing drugs again, gambling, and “chasing the next thrill...” until that worst day happened. Police raided her house, and it was all over.
The maximum seven-year sentence handed down by the judge was double what her attorney had expected. She was 30 years old and a seven-year sentence felt like her life was over. Amazingly, that part of her life actually was.
The counselor in prison was blunt: “Michelle, you can do your time however you want. You can spend it worrying about how to fit in here—playing cards and smoking cigarettes—or you can use this time to turn your life around and become a better version of yourself.” Says Cirocco, “That single piece of advice changed everything."
Fast forward seven long years. She reunited with her family, enrolled in school, earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing, and later an MBA. Having trained with Televerde (an international marketing company) when she was imprisoned, she was employed by them, and worked her way up through the ranks. Today, she is Televerde’s Chief Impact Officer and founder and CEO of the Televerde Foundation. She has received numerous awards for her work helping women to become better versions of themselves, just as she had done and has told her story in her book, "The Second Chance Advantage."
Michelle Cirocco had been redeemed, like it says in Psalm 107:2, “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.”
Jim
