Transcription:
02:04 – 03:10
Host: Jennifer
Hi, I’m Jennifer Jackson, community studio leader with JLG architects. We are embarking on a Community Matters podcast, and we’re in the middle of a series on incarceration, trying to learn about incarceration from people in the center of it and on the edges. Today we’re talking with Rachelle Juntunen, who is a leader in the Dakota Women’s Correctional Rehab Center, which is in New England, North Dakota.
Her daily work is all surrounded within the uniqueness of incarcerated women, who are often mothers and victims of trauma themselves. Rochelle is a significant person. She lives in authentic leadership and she creates immense and positive impact. I hope you enjoy.
Episode four The Community Matters podcast. JLG Architects.
So how did you initially become interested in working in this kind of environment?
03:10 – 04:39
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Well, I you know, I don’t know that that was ever. It was never really my plan. It was never really. I pictured myself going, but I ended up when I was in training for addiction counseling. I interned at the Youth Correction Center in Mandan, and I really liked working with the juveniles. And so after I worked there, I went to home on the range, and then there was just a position at the prison.
It was closer to home, closer to where I wanted to be. Took it. Not real sure what it was going to, what it was going to be like, and I liked it. Right. Like, it’s it’s interesting. It’s intriguing. There’s there’s a side of corrections that you really don’t see unless you work in it and kind of live in it.
Right. So it’s not about particularly with the women and in North Dakota. I mean, what we see, right. It’s not it’s not bars and violence and you know, all of that. It’s it’s humans. Right. And it’s mostly addiction. So people always, you know, they’ll say like, are you scared? No, I’m not scared. I’ve never been scared. And most of them, you know, when they’re coming in, a lot of their crimes are driven by addiction.
And when they sober up or they clean up, their an entirely different person. You know, I’ve told a lot of people you could I could bring out most of the women in that facility and integrate them into somewhere in the community. And if you just had a random conversation with them, you would have no idea. I mean, they really are just people.
04:39 – 05:06
Host: Jennifer
I agree related to this. Then it really brings up the question of what is the purpose of rehabilitation? And and I guess more along the lines of what is the purpose of incarceration? Has that question changed for you in your 17 years? Like have you kind of changed what you think the purpose is of incarceration over time, or has that been pretty consistent?
05:06 – 07:32
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
No, I think it’s definitely changed over time. You know, I don’t know that I had given it a lot of thought necessarily before when I was younger in college. You know, it wasn’t something that I had spent a lot of time thinking about. And so, you know, when I started working at the prison, I mean, it was pretty clear right away that it was just in a different environment than what one would think a prison looks like or is.
I mean, you see TV shows and that certainly is nothing like what we have in art. And so it’s, you know, it quickly became obvious to me and with my, my history and my degree in addiction counseling, it was really always kind of a focus on rehabilitation. Right? So 95, over 95% of the people that are incarcerated in the state of Kota are coming out.
I mean, they are not going to spend the rest of their life in prison. And so how do we get them to a place? And that was always kind of the goal. Like, how can we help them, you know, through treatment groups and working individually with people like what? What could I do to help them get to a place where hopefully they wouldn’t come back?
What I didn’t realize back then, though, was the amount of barriers that exist in the community. Like until I started working with the jail in Dickinson, I was pretty just tied into that institutional piece. I mean, we didn’t we sent people out to the transition centers, but very few ever release from DWC. Like they’re going off into, you know, a different facility.
And that’s where they’re transitioning. Adam. So we really didn’t have a big role in that transitional piece. And so once I started working with the jail in the last year, I mean, it became very evident to me that there is a huge piece of rehabilitation, incarceration that is completely affected by the gaps in services in the community and all the barriers that established we can have the best prison ever, right?
I mean, you could build the biggest, the best prison. You could have all the best programing, but none of that is really going to be maintained if yet turn them out and you can’t meet their needs in the community. I mean, people have to be able to eat, people have to be able to, you know, have shelter. And if they can’t meet those, those basic needs, I mean, it just drives them into a horrible place, you know, where there’s just not a lot of options.
07:32 – 07:37
Host: Jennifer
What is the most difficult part of your job, Rachelle?
07:37 – 09:06
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Oh, I think seeing the struggles. Right. So second to staffing.
In regards to the prison, I mean, it really is it’s the struggles, right? And not being able to fix all of the problems, you know, I mean we can see right. We can see where these gaps are. And they’re there just across all of the agencies. You know, I think I was telling you, maybe when you’re out touring about the guy that we had released from the jail and we were putting him in the pretrial program and he didn’t have a place to live.
So our program manager took him to the DMV to get him an I.D.. Well, he couldn’t get an I.D. because he didn’t have an address, you know, and he couldn’t get on the housing. He couldn’t do the housing application without an I.D., you know? And it’s just what I mean, I don’t even that is frustrating, but it’s like, I can’t fix it.
I can advocate, you know, and we can. We can try to get change, but it’s it’s difficult to not just be able to say, here’s a problem, let’s fix it because we know it exists. And it doesn’t just exist for him, it exists for people all over. And so some of these smaller, not small, these very big problems, right, that drive people back into using into jails, into whatever there’s ways to fix it.
But I don’t have the power to fix it.
09:06 – 09:52
Host: Jennifer
That has to be very frustrating. I can see how that would be the most frustrating. Even if you did absolutely everything to set someone up for success, and they still get to that point, and then they are unable to get on their feet and integrate into society just because of the different roadblocks that they run into. And what’s interesting about that is I just had a conversation with Jonathan Holt, who was with Recovery Reinvented, and he was explaining how the most difficult times for someone who suffers from addiction are those periods of transition.
In those periods of frustration, when things that can be simple for somebody becomes extremely complex for someone dealing with addiction. So that just kind of compounds everything that you’re describing, right?
09:52 – 10:33
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
You know, and I mean, it would it would be frustrating. Yeah. For me to have to go through that. But it’s even more frustrating for them. And, you know, I think the thing is there’s that stigma and and that is that is valid and it exists. And so if I was in the same situation, you know, I might be able to have a little bit they might have a little bit more leniency with me.
Right. Because I’m not a convicted felon, but it’s just not a lot. There are great people out there and there are people that are willing to give opportunity, but there’s also people that, you know, you have this criminal history, you’re convicted of whatever, like you did it to yourself, figure it out, which just isn’t helpful at all.
10:33 – 11:12
Host: Jennifer
I always see that as either you get the benefit of the doubt, or you’re not getting the benefit of the doubt. And that’s a really powerful thing. And stigma plays into that. Like everything that you’re saying plays into that.
I was going to ask as well, you know, we talk a lot. I noticed as a part of all these conversations, I’m really empathizing with people that struggle from addiction, people that are incarcerated. Do you have an idea of the collateral damage, you know, to to communities that are being done by women that are incarcerated within your facility?
11:13 – 13:45
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
You know, it affects everything, right? So, I mean, you have you have the crime, you have the victim, but then you have systems that that are under that as well. And so it’s not just, you know, the education system, right. The foster care system, the social service system, the housing employment. Right. All of it. Like it just affects everything.
Because the more people that are incarcerated, the more potential employees you don’t have, the more dependency potentially on the foster care system or the social services system department. You know, DHS just encompasses a lot of different systems like it. It is taxing on so many different systems. I mean, the very basic cost of money, right? And so the cost of incarcerating somebody is very expensive.
And so the amount of money that goes into that incarceration piece is significant when potentially it could be redirected right at a cheaper rate to get somebody into services, you know, inpatient services with wraparound. It’s just so much more expensive to put them in prison. And it’s really not where they belong. You know, I it’s time and I’ve had a lot of discussions with people about this.
Some agree with me, some doubt, you know, on an addiction. Right. So is a medical issue. Well, it is a medical issue, right. I mean, so when they talk about it being a disease, you’ll hear people say like, well, it’s their choice. It’s not something that just happens, which to some degree is correct. Right. But genetically they’re predisposed to this.
So I might be able to go and have a drink. And it doesn’t affect me the way that it does with somebody who has that predisposition to alcohol. You know, I think comparatively you could look at it similarity to, you know, diabetes potentially, or obesity, like their medical issues. And if they’re not treated, they become chronic, right. They’re chronic medical issues that become progressive.
And it just goes it just follows this pattern. And that’s exactly what you see with addiction. You know in addiction things are better. And then as they continue to use they fall deeper and deeper into that chronic addiction. And it’s harder and harder, you know, to get traction on your own, to get to be able to go on to a different path or to enter into recovery, you know, and really be able to meet those needs emotionally, you know, as well as environmentally.
13:45 – 14:06
Host: Jennifer
It seems like throughout your professional career. Addiction has always been a part of it, you know, kind of like a significant, meaningful part of it. Is it really something that drives you personally that you want to be a part of the solution for all? Is that just a coincidence?
14:06 – 16:05
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
No. I want to be a part of this solution for it. Right. I mean, I, I personally, right? I mean, I’ve seen the struggles I’ve had people in my life that have struggled with it. And so I want to see a healthier community. And I want to see, you know, the time where people actually recognize it as a medical issue, instead of it being subjective to just complete criticism and stigma.
You know? And until we do that, I, you know, you see more and more people reaching out from the community. But until we really get Ahold of that, and I think there is this kind of acceptance that this is what it is, it’s going to be a struggle. You know, I mean, there’s great things happening and there’s lots of great agencies that are stepping up, you know, and really bringing the light to it.
I mean, recovery and being recovery reinvented like you talked about. Right. Like that’s that’s been a major mission. You know, the first lady in breaking that stigma. But there’s just a lot of barriers to break down in North Dakota because there’s some pretty strong opinions on it. You know, which is interesting too, because when you think about when you see all the studies, right, about people in North Dakota and binge drinking and the amount of alcohol that is abused in the state of North Dakota, people don’t really question that.
You know, people in North Dakota tend to have a tolerance for alcoholism because it’s legal, but they don’t really put it together. It’s the same addiction, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s drugs, whether whatever that addiction is, it’s the same process. It causes the same chaos, it causes the same problems. You know, if you if we went back to prohibition and alcohol was outlawed in a month, I mean, I would probably know some people that would end up in jail for drinking, you know, I mean, it just is.
And the only reason that it’s tolerated is because it’s because it’s legal.
16:05 – 16:41
Host: Jennifer
You know, I think about where we came from, and I don’t know if it’s still the statistic, but Bowman County used to be the worst for binge drinking in North Dakota. And North Dakota used to be the worst for binge drinking in the entire nation. And, you know, I think about just the scale of the community we came from.
Could a community of 2000 people do things differently to make change in an impact? And what do you think that would look like to start reducing the stigma and understanding addiction differently?
16:41 – 18:14
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Well, it would be a beautiful sight, right? I mean, it it’s just initially breaking down those barriers, right. And being respectful of people and offering help and offering assistance and, you know, being willing to understand that what they’re going through is really no different than any other issues that people have. You know, that really drives their world.
You know, I don’t I mean, Bowman County, Bowman County would step up, right? I mean, we could help a lot of people in both county. Right. And that’s really what probably, you know, communities need to start. And I think the start of being able to take care of people in your own community is the start of it growing, because there’s a lot of people in Bowman County, the struggle, and there’s a lot of people that don’t ever talk about them.
Right? You know, I mean, when we we were younger, I mean, you knew, right? I mean, you know, growing up in Bowman County who’s struggling with addiction, but people don’t typically talk about it. Maybe they do more about people that struggle with the drug addiction, because it’s just seems easier to shame or to have that conversation like there’s something wrong with them.
Right. But they aren’t they aren’t as critical of people that, you know, drink a lot. Right? So they spend a lot of time it’s there’s just different verbiage that’s been used for it, for people that are drinking compared to people that are using.
18:14 – 18:36
Host: Jennifer
You’re absolutely right. And I never formed the connection before, like you did, between being legal and not legal, you know, as maybe a coping mechanism or a excuse maybe for treating those two addiction, substance addictions differently, you know, when they have a lot in common.
18:36 – 18:47
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
You know, I mean, drug addiction is it’s it’s morally wrong because it’s illegal. That’s the perception by a lot of people. But it’s really no different. Right. And it’s not wrong.
18:47 – 19:15
Host: Jennifer
So how has your role professionally impacted your role outside of work? And I say this particularly from the perspective of a mother, because, you know, I have the privilege of seeing how amazing of a mother you are, you know, with your children. And I’m just curious if if you know, everything that you’ve seen has changed your approach to being a mother in some small or big way.
19:15 – 23:16
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
You know? Yes. I mean, one, I am very, I think, aware of how lucky I am, you know, and often remind myself of just how grateful I really should be. Right. I mean, we’re we’re privileged. And I have a lot of those conversations with my kids. You know, that’s the flip side of this one. The work that I do scares me for my kids because I see what happens.
Right? And I see, you know, when you when you talk with the women. When I used to do the assessments on the women, they started using a really young age and it just progressed. And so that’s scary to me. A lot of them grew up in an environment where there was a lot of trauma. There was a lot of abuse.
I mean, historically when you see, you know, if you picked 100 files and read through their their evaluations, probably 96 of them, 95 of them, I mean, would say, you know, they would admit to being abused when they were a child, whether it was emotional, physical, sexual. There’s trauma, there’s chaos. Like the environment they grew up in is nothing I ever do.
You know, which makes me privilege. And some people get a little worked up about that word, you know, it’s like, well, I had to pay my way through college, right? They don’t really see that. Like, there’s such a bigger view of what people see or think of when they hear the word privileged. Like, was privileged, you know, coming from, you know, having millions of dollars where you can travel wherever you want and do whatever you want and have no, you know, tight responsibility of having to report to work every week or, you know, you want something, you just go buy it.
But I don’t see privileges that and I think really my work within the prison system has, has shown me that right. Like, I’m simply privileged because I had a safe environment growing up. You know, I had the opportunity to go to school. I, you know, I didn’t have to raise younger siblings or take on that motherly role or make sure my parents were getting to work or having to make up excuses.
Right. I mean, it just that’s privilege. And so having those conversations with my kids and I started doing that, you know, just talking about, you know, their life is something that they’ll never understand. I mean, they will they cannot at this point in their life understand what some of these other kids have been through. And I think that’s important.
Right? It’s important for kind of planting that empathetic seed of viewing people differently. You know, there’s kids in my kids class that I know, you know, their parents struggle. And just having those honest conversations that are age appropriate, of course, but how we need to maybe be more tolerant, you know, you should be more tolerant. And maybe there’s this behavior is because of their home environment, more so than how they’re choosing to act, you know, and that’s I think that’s just important.
But it’s scary because I, you know, I worry and addiction doesn’t discriminate, right? I mean, I my kids can grow up in the greatest family and I could do everything right, although I won’t. Right. Parenting isn’t that’s not the way it works. But if you did everything right, there’s nothing you know that is going to there’s no absolute to saying you’re never going to struggle with addiction.
You’re never going to try that drug. You’re never going to take that first drink, you know. And so that’s scary to me. But there’s just a lot of honest conversation I have with my kids, which is I probably, you know, prior to having kids. And I never would have thought I’d be having this conversation. My oldest is nine, right?
I never would have thought I’d be having these real, honest conversations with my nine year old. And maybe so though, that he would be more aware, like he’s so aware of some of these things already. You know what’s happening, right? Like he knows. And so, you know, kids are talking about it in fourth grade. Kids are talking about some of this stuff, which is kind of frightening.
23:17 – 23:52
Host: Jennifer
It is. I have a nine year old as my oldest as well. And you know, one thing, and my struggle is on a totally different scale than yours because this is your whole life. You know, I volunteered and have been on the board of a homeless shelter in Bismarck for, I don’t know, a decade or something like that.
And I’ve noticed this fear in myself of integrating my children into that facility, you know, like bringing them with me and having them be a part of my volunteer work there.
23:52 – 23:53
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Yeah.
23:53 – 24:40
Host: Jennifer
And I’ve just been really disappointed in myself in terms of letting fear stop me from really recognizing humanity, you know? And I’ve had to, like, really force myself to think differently and not let the very worst scenario that could ever humanly exist manifest in my mind and stop me from allowing my kids to be more empathetic, you know?
And I think that’s a real challenge for society because you care so much about your children. But every children needs people to care about them. And so that’s a that’s a huge struggle. But I can’t help but think, if we were a little less scared that the world could be, as a whole, much better.
24:40 – 24:42
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Oh, yeah. For sure. Absolutely.
24:42 – 25:00
Host: Jennifer
So some of the articles I’ve been reading recently have been explaining, you know, on a national level, women’s incarceration and women in probation have been increasing at a rate higher than men. Are you noticing that in North Dakota as well?
25:00 – 30:47
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Oh, yeah. I mean, we the amount of females coming into the system have far out paced the bed availability. You know, I’m in a very short time, right? Like, you’re talking growing over 200% in a matter of maybe a decade, right? I mean, it’s it has just taken off. And I thought maybe we had kind of seen the height of it, you know, over the last couple of years and, you know, maybe things you kind of hope things start to level off.
But we’re seeing more and more. But now, you know, North Dakota right now is in they have what they call a prioritization plan. And legislature put a cap on the number of women that can be in the prison, you know, so now that cap is in place and, you know, the Department of Corrections kind of gets to decide who they’re going to bring in first to the prison.
You know, it becomes who’s the priority to get into prison. And then there are women that are sitting in jail. So the intention of that right was to try to spur stakeholders, states attorneys, law enforcement, county jails, you know, try to get creative and trying to, you know, kind of push back to the amount of people that are getting incarcerated.
So lovely idea. But the problem is, is I don’t know how much of that has flowed out necessarily into like, the jails. Right. So there’s a lot of county jails in its county. It’s run by the county. There’s not a lot of funds to run the jail. People don’t want to pay for jails, right? I mean, they when you start talking about taking mill levies from county taxpayers and funding jails, like that’s the first thing people are like, why?
Why are we putting any money into that? Well, there’s good reason to put money into it, because the sooner you can interrupt that, the sooner you can get to people with addiction and keep them out of jail. Right? Or keep them from going to prison or becoming more chronic, the cheaper it is, right? If you only look at it from a financial perspective, which seems to be what most people are usually concerned about, I shouldn’t say most a large majority of people, whether that’s legislators or, you know, commissioners or whoever, that financial piece is always front and center when you start talking about money for corrections.
And there’s a cost advantage to actually putting money into the system. You know, we we started last fall we the jail in Dickinson and then our the Stark county state’s attorney and the Southwest Judicial District. We all came together and started a pretrial program. So people that cannot make bond, you know, are screened. And if they’re eligible for the program and they’re willing to to commit to the program, they go out in the community with this case manager who just gets services wrapped around them.
They go out on like on an ankle monitor, right on a GPS. It costs less than $5 a day, but it costs $150 a day to put somebody in jail. But the the county’s right. So when you start talking about this and and there’s like like there’s the opportunity to do like home confinement. But the people have to pay.
Right. So the people that are convicted have to pay for home confinement. Home confinement might cost literally maybe $20 a day, right. But putting somebody in jail costs 150. So there’s a I always question like, why doesn’t the count? Why don’t the county’s right, like pay for this? Why don’t we pay to put people if that’s the concern in home monitoring, put more people in the community pay to have more case managers that can help wrap services around people.
Because when you look at it from a financial, financial perspective, it’s way cheaper. It would save a ton of money, but people just aren’t there yet. You know, we’re getting there, but there’s a lot of people that just aren’t there yet to say, oh yeah, financially that makes sense, you know? And some of it’s an awareness. I think some of it is still that cultural belief that it was their choice.
They got their way into jail. They can figure it out when they get out, you know. But I try to remind people, like when you grow up in an environment, you know, for me, growing up in an environment where my parents were home, it was safe. That was normal to me. Right. And that’s normal to a lot of people I know, and a lot of my friends and my family, like we all had normal, per se environments growing up.
But what some of these people and a lot of them that end up in in the criminal justice system, their normal is entirely different. Their normal was being abused their whole entire life. That’s all they knew. That’s what they seen happening around them, you know? So there’s this perception that, you know, why would they do it? Why don’t they just get up and leave?
Or why don’t they get out of that once they get old enough to understand it? It’s not that simple, right? I mean, it’s you’re literally taking somebody out of their environment. And even if they want to get out of it and a lot of them do, you know, we see that with the women, a lot of them, there’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of them want to do something different.
And it’s frustrating when they go through all of the programs and you get these services lined up for them in the community, and then they end up, you know, going back, you know, whether it’s into the same environment or they’re hanging out with the same friends and they’re using again, or they relapse, or maybe there’s a new crime that’s committed, you know, and they come back and it’s frustrating, but there’s a big piece of understanding that goes into that.
I think after you’ve you’ve worked in the system and you have this history with the system of seeing. It’s just not that it’s not a switch, it’s not a light switch that you flip off and be like, I’m going to do things different today. And it’s that easy, right? You walk out of the room, shut the door, and it’s easy.
It’s super complicated and super difficult.
30:47 – 30:54
Host: Jennifer
Do you think that the women in your facility are safe? Do you think it’s safe for women to be incarcerated?
30:54 – 32:49
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
I think in our facility, you know, so we have we have different audits. There is a federal law, it’s called the Prison Rape Elimination Act. And it’s just that it is a law that has certain requirements that protect inmates from sexual abuse from staff, other inmates, you know, whatever that would be. And when they when they audit us, one of the things we always here is that they say they feel safe, you know, they know they can come to staff and they feel safe.
I know that’s not the environment in all prisons. You know, we’ve had women that have done federal time or time and other in other states, you know, and and they will say like, this is nothing compared to, you know, the prison I was in, one was in California, one was in, you know, she did some federal time and she just said, I mean, it’s a whole different world there.
And you’re not safe. You don’t feel safe, you know. And so in North Dakota, I think we’re fortunate, you know, but I don’t you know, I always kind of wonder though, right? So if you have somebody who’s grown up and spent all of their life being abused and we see this, I mean, we do know this as a fact.
Like when somebody’s traumatized, like their brain works differently, right? They get into that fight or flight like they don’t they don’t process things the same way we do. Once that trauma has happened, they’re just more on edge and they’re more willing to react instead of being able to just step back and actually process it happening, you know? So do they ever really feel safe?
I mean, there’s little things, right? The tone of somebody, voice yelling, screaming, like all of that can make them feel very insecure in the overall picture. They might say they feel safe in in our facility. And I think they do, you know, for the most part. But there’s there’s always that peace within them that there may be not safe.
Right. And they’re easily triggered to feeling like they’re not safe.
32:49 – 33:50
Host: Jennifer
Family seems like a really big part in my opinion. As a mother, being without your family, being without your children, when you’d have to choose to go get treatment for yourself, or that comes with leaving your family and your children, that becomes like a horrible decision to make, right? So I’m just trying to understand, you know, we just recently daylit this topic in a podcast that will be aired soon on the importance of family and how right now, North Dakota doesn’t have this option to go to treatment with your children or things like that.
Do you think that this is something that affects your clientele, and is it something that you see, maybe some ideas on how it could be improved or made easier or or am I totally off base? And maybe it’s just something that makes life more difficult for them?
33:50 – 37:28
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
No, I think it definitely plays a role. It has to play a role, right? As mothers, it has to play a role. And so we do this all the time, right? We don’t attend to our own personal needs because we are attending to everybody else’s. And and we typically, you know, tend to cut ourselves short. And so, you know, I think maybe more so early on, you know, they want to be there.
They want to be there for the kids. It’s frightening. They don’t want to fail. You know, that’s something that has come up in a lot of conversations I’ve had over the years with the women is that they failed as a mom. Right. And they’ve let their kids down. And so I think just based on society and the stigma, being a mom and having an addiction issue feels like failure.
And so what likely prevents them right from reaching out earlier to say, hey, you know, this, this isn’t working for me. I have a problem. And it’s almost like it has to get so bad for a lot of people before they. And sometimes they don’t ever want to admit it. Sometimes they’re forced to admit it because now they’re sitting in court, or now they’re in jail, and now they can’t deny it, right?
But now their kids are gone. But early intervention. I think, is absolutely affected by the stigma of of what that looks like, particularly for a mom. Right? I mean, women are viewed, you know, the the role of the mother is view different than the role of the father. And that’s just a generalized, you know, there’s it’s changing. You know, I think over time it’s changing.
But historically it’s it’s kind of been that thought that, mothers have to be there, you know, there’s more acceptance for an absence, father absent father, than there is for an absent mother. And so not being able to go, not being safe financially to that’s a huge problem. Right? I mean, if it women raising kids can’t really afford to take a month off of work to get into treatment, you know, and so some of the treatment programs, if you’re doing inpatient treatment, you’re not you don’t work.
Right. I mean, that’s that’s what you’re there for. So then what do you do with your kids? Right. So even if you could take your kids along, you know, that would be a huge, I think, stigma reducer. But it’s so much more complicated than that because, you know, you can’t put up these, these facilities in every town.
And so how do the kids get to school? It interrupts their school. It interrupts, you know, like just it’s such a big systems issue. And that’s just the thing with addiction is it’s it affects every system and it’s just not that easy. It seems like it would be easy. And it seems like that would make you know, things easier.
But then there’s all these other like, but how would we make this happen and how would we, you know. And what is it? You know, the argument of could should kids be in that environment, right? I mean, should kids be in an environment where they’re surrounded by people that are struggling with addiction? Now, if you started a cancer center where people would go right and do treatments and live there and took their kids, nobody would question, right?
But I think you’re on to something. When you say fear, like people are scared that somehow we’re going to damage our children when we admit or introduce them to, you know, some of this. And but if we look at it as just a medical issue, it puts an entirely different light on it. But people are scared. Yeah.
37:29 – 39:10
Host: Jennifer
I agree, that’s great perspective. You know, I was I was preparing for today. I was really looking forward to talking with you because I really admire you. You know, just who you are. And I started to ask myself, like, really? What is it that I admire so much about Rochelle? And there’s a lot of things, but I decided that one of them was your endurance.
You know, like you take in all of this suffering every day and you still show up for work and are trying to make lives better for people that really have a lot of things, you know, in their lives, set up for failure and challenges. And that has to take so much energy and just willpower and discipline to just be able to continue to give.
So that was the first one. The other one is how resolute you are. You know, you’re really able to find clarity in the midst of a very complex situation. You know everything about this. The more that I learn, the more I realize that there is no simple answer, you know? But it’s really about just continuing to show up and try to find the answer.
And then finally, the balance between empathy and accountability. You know, that that boundary is so important to have, and I think is a part of the key to unlocking all of these, like the answers to this. So how, you know, thinking about who you are, who are the influencers in your life to allow you to be the person that you are today?
39:10 – 40:00
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
You know, so I think, you know, there’s there’s a variety of people. And I was fortunate to have a variety of people in my life, you know, and, and some of the, the just steadfast right. The steady and strong, I think is influenced just from, you know, growing up on a farm and my grandparents and just, just that, like not giving up, you know, even when things are bad, farmers don’t give up.
You know, ranchers don’t give up. They get up, they keep going. And I was I was not a great farm kid. I had no desire to be in the dirt work. I mean, I never pulled a calf, don’t I? None of that. Right. Like that’s not my thing. And I knew it very early on. But you see it.
And when you raised, you know, within it, you know, I mean, family vacations are driven. I mean, it’s for the moment when it rains.
40:01 – 40:02
Host: Jennifer
When it rains.
40:02 – 40:23
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Yeah. You don’t get to go take two weeks off and go travel the country because it just doesn’t work for the lifestyle that we grow up in, you know? So I think that’s part of that is it’s it’s just it’s this always going, and then I, but then there’s an empathetic piece. Right. So like with my mom, she was very empathetic and she was very kind.
And, my grandma was that way, you know, my, my mom’s mom was that way. And so, you know, I’ve been raised by some women that have just been very empathetic and understanding and loving and caring and non-judgmental, you know, and so that was big for me, you know. And then I had another my other grandma, my dad’s, you know, mom was very much about accountability and no nonsense, you know, and so it, you know, there’s there’s a variety of people, but I think I just was lucky enough to have a little bit of everything where it’s just kind of just all formed together.
And I wasn’t always that way. And I haven’t always been that way. But there’s it just has all come together throughout my life, I guess, where and I and I love what I do. It’s super stressful and it’s super emotionally draining and tiresome and but it’s I just it feels right to me, you know? And I love getting creative and trying to help and, you know, establishing, you know, whether we can start new programs or do something different.
Right? Because I just genuinely want to see people succeed. You know, I genuinely want these women to never come back to prison. You know, I want them to get their kids back. I want them to live a life where they feel safe consistently and they’re able to meet their own needs, and they’re able to be independent, right? I mean, that’s another thing, you know, that I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to is just independence, right?Like, I can take care of myself. I mean, there’s I never felt like I needed anyone to take care of me. And I want them to be able to have that, you know? But but it’s a long road. And so I there was a lot of people, but I certainly would say, you know, my grandparents, my parents were some of those really driving factors.
And then I had a super amazing clinical supervisor when I was in training. And she just really, you know, in my early days of training, I wasn’t so sure that I was in the right place. And I felt completely ill equipped to even, you know, to be in my training. I was like, I spent four years in college and I feel like I don’t know anything, you know?
And my training was nine months long. And what I learned in nine months far surpassed anything I did in four years, you know? And so I was really unsure when I first got into that. And I and I do think if it wouldn’t have been for her and her, just push and believe, you know, belief in me and drive that I probably would have backed out and I probably wouldn’t even be in this field.
You know, growing up I worked in a bank, right. So when I was in high school, I worked in a bank. When I was in college, I worked in a bank. And I always say when I’m done with this work, I’m going back to I’m going back to the bank and I’m going to be a teller. You know, I want to do that.
I want to talk to the the older people that come in every Tuesday and they get $200 in cash, and they want so many 20s and so many times in 75, right? I mean, I love that about working in the bank was the older generation that came in and we would talk and it was like their social outing for the week, you know.
And so that’s that’s where we’re going back to once I get tired of, you know, this and it becomes too much. But I’m not done yet.
43:40 – 43:56
Host: Jennifer
So no, you’re definitely not done yet. Well, I just want to thank you for your time today and let you know how much I appreciate. And I think North Dakota appreciates everything that you’re doing for the women in our community. So thank you so much, Rochelle.
43:56 – 43:56
Guest: Rachelle Juntunen
Yeah.
43:56 – 44:29
Host: Jennifer
Thank you for your.
Time, your kind words.
Episode for The Community Matters podcast, JLG Architects.
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