My name is Joshua Palmer, CDCR #B66703 and in June 2018 I was sentenced to Life Without the Opportunity for Parole-LWOP. When I was sentenced the judge said, “you are a broken unredeemable person who is unsafe to live in society.” She was right. When I committed my crime I was lost to moral standards and living any kind of good values. I was selfish, cowardly, and an apathetic person who lived only for myself and my pleasure. I was deceptive, manipulative, controlling, violent and scared. I was scared to face the truth about who I was and the harm my behavior was causing so many people. This fear, I now understand comes from my past pain and trauma; led me to be obsessively addicted to drugs, specifically weed, cocaine, and alcohol. See, something terrible happened to me when I was a child, approximately eight, that hurt me to my core. I was so focused on evading that pain and its source, that I became like the person that hurt me. I took selfishly and without remorse, I used people like tools to build myself a life or reputation that I believed protected me and provided me with unsustainable pleasures and relationships. And worst of all I blamed everyone else for any problems, pain, frustrations and loss I experienced.
Hurt people hurt people and I hurt a lot of people. I know nothing that happened to me excuses or justifies my behavior. Like mom always used to say, “Two wrongs won’t make anything right.” I say all this because I know my behaviors, my actions, and my attitudes were horrible and unforgivable but they are not who I truly am. Those behaviors were caused by unhealthy beliefs, distorted thinking and reactive impulsively due to my traumatic childhood experiences. Since being incarcerated I have interred into recovery from my addictions and have over 9 years sobriety. The clarity sobriety has brought, along with radical accountability, I have been able to honestly look at my past. I have done some very painful digging into my pain and trauma and developed some very authentic insight. I have and continue to learn about who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. I have, with the help of mental health clinicians, mentors, facilitators, and sponsors gotten back in touch with my real authentic self.
Today I am confident in myself, I value who I am and the power I have to contribute to the betterment of my community. I am creative, caring, empathetic, I am honest, reliable, humble, hard working, and dedicated to my continued rehabilitation. I facilitate several self-help groups, giving to those who will go home so they themselves can be smarter, healthier, and safer people. I teach in honor of my victim who wanted to be a teacher. I give 100% of myself to doing the work of correcting my destructive past behaviors and beliefs, to honor my victim, her family, my family, and to you the members of society who have suffered unjustly for my actions. To be honest I started this journey of rehabilitation out of fear that if I didn’t change I would never get my chance to go home. Now I do it because I want to, I want to be proud of myself, to have some real confidence, to believe in myself and have truly authentic relationships without lies, doubts, fear or pretense.
I continue everyday to be better for myself, not for the chance to go home, which may or may not ever happen, only God truly knows. My motivation is you, you deserve better from me, my mom, my sisters, my nieces, all my loved ones, everyone who was and is negatively impacted by my choices, are the reason I choose everyday to be and continue to become the man you deserve. I conclude this with saying I am so deeply and truly sorry for all the pain and suffering I have caused. My hope and prayer is that God continues to provide me the opportunity to give back, to be of service and contribute positive change, for myself, and my community. Thank you and God bless.