Your Past Explains You, But It Does Not Define You with Lawyer Johnson  | Ep. 34

ByMegan North

On this week’s episode of The True North Show I am joined by Lawyer Johnson who inspires everyone he speaks to.  Lawyer shares his story from childhood to the choices he made that saw him spending time in the prison system.  His journey is incredible and each step of the way he has taken action, learned and grown with every experience.  He has shared the deep and traumatic details of his journey in a memoir in the hopes of inspiring others that anything is possible. 

Bio:

Lawyer Johnson is a transformational speaker, author, entrepreneur, and community advocate whose life’s work is turning pain into purpose.

Born into adversity and shaped by childhood sexual abuse, emotional silence, and systemic barriers, Lawyer spent years internalising pain without the language or tools to process it.  That unresolved trauma contributed to destructive choices that led to incarceration in early adulthood, where he began the deep inner work that would ultimately change the trajectory of his life.  Through mentorship, education, and spiritual growth, he learned to name his wounds, accept accountability, and refuse to let his past define his future.

Lawyer is the author of the memoir My Pain Is My Identity, a raw account of trauma, incarceration, faith, and redemption that resonates with survivors of abuse, justice-impacted individuals, faith communities, and seekers of personal growth.  As a speaker, he is known for emotionally grounded storytelling and practical tools that equip audiences to pursue healing, emotional discipline, leadership, and faith-centred resilience.

He is the founder of Motivational Wingz, a mentoring initiative for youth and adults affected by trauma and incarceration, and is the host of The Lawyer Johnson Talk Radio Show, where he amplifies conversations on healing, mental health, faith, and responsibility.  At the heart of his work is a simple conviction: your past explains you, but it does not define you.

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Purchase Lawyer’s book using this link:

Transcript:

Megan North (00:00)
Today, I am joined by a man who I admire greatly, and I have only met him on one occasion. Lawyer Johnson is a transformational speaker, author, entrepreneur, and community advocate whose life’s work is turning pain into purpose. Born into adversity and shaped by childhood sexual abuse, emotional silence, and systemic barriers, Lawyer spent years internalising pain without the language or tools to process it. That unresolved trauma contributed to destructive choices that led to incarceration in early adulthood, where he began the deeper inner work that would ultimately change the trajectory of his life.

Through mentorship, education, and spiritual growth, he learned to name his wounds, accept accountability, and refuse to let his past define his future. With a renewed sense of purpose and responsibility, when released in 1998, Lawyer built multiple successful businesses and began an entrepreneurial journey that reinforces one of his core messages: there are no deadlines on dreams. Love that.

Lawyer is the author of the memoir My Pain Is My Identity, a raw account of trauma, incarceration, faith, and redemption that resonates with survivors of abuse. As a speaker, he is known for emotionally grounded storytelling and practical tools that equip audiences to pursue healing, emotional discipline, leadership, and faith-centred resilience.

He is the founder of Motivational Wings, a mentoring initiative for youth and adults affected by trauma and incarceration, and he is the host of the Lawyer Johnson Talk Radio Show, where he amplifies conversations on healing, mental health, faith, and responsibility. At the heart of his work is a simple conviction: your past explains you, but it does not define you.

Welcome to the show, Lawyer. I am really looking forward to our conversation today.

Lawyer Johnson (02:12)
Thank you for having me on, Megan.

Megan North (02:13)
You’re very welcome. How does it feel when I read out all of these amazing things that you’ve done through your life?

Lawyer Johnson (02:24)
It feels amazing, I can say that. Because it’s like I’m going back in time from the beginning of all my pain to where I’m at now. So, to hear someone say all these nice things about me, it’s a good feeling. The accolades are good.

Megan North (02:43)
Yeah. And I love to always hear, it’s quite funny because we often, I don’t think we reflect enough on where we’ve come from. I think often as humans, and particularly when we’re very driven, we’re always looking at what’s next: what do I want to do next? What do I want to achieve? What impact do I want to have?

But we sometimes forget to reflect on what we’ve done, even just in the last 12 months, not to mention the last five or ten years. So I actually really enjoy seeing the reaction of my guests when I’m reading out the bio, because you can see them going, “That’s what I’ve done.”

So, let’s dive in. I suspect there were probably a lot of defining moments for you, but what was the defining moment that led you to pursue your true passion and purpose, like what you’re doing now?

Lawyer Johnson (03:25)
I know that I had to finally stop running from my past and decide to face it head-on. And when I got incarcerated, it forced me to do those things, like stop running from your past. I was in a situation where I couldn’t run anymore.

All the pain that I was feeling inside, and how I would release that pain into other things, I couldn’t do it anymore. I was confined and I had to really dig in within myself and find a better way to deal with all the anger that was built up inside me. So I had to stop running and face the trauma.

Megan North (04:28)
And was it something like a program when you were incarcerated, or was it something that someone said to you that you thought, “Okay, now I need to make a change?”

Lawyer Johnson (04:40)
The defining moment for me, where I knew that I had to make a change, is as I was telling my story. Before I got incarcerated, and I was facing a whole bunch of time, I ended up breaking out of jail, like something out of a movie. I broke out of jail and I stayed on the run for approximately three and a half years.

So after they finally caught up with me, I was in Phoenix, Arizona. When they brought me back to North Carolina, you’ve got to look at the time span. That’s like three years being on the run, three years without seeing my immediate family.

The defining moment for me, that made me stop running and look into the mirror, was when my mother came to visit me for the very first time in three-plus years. My mother and I are so close. I’m her only son. I’m the youngest child out of her three kids. And she couldn’t look me in my eyes in the visitation room. She would just stare away from me. There was so much hurt and pain in her eyes.

At that time, one of my close friends brought her up there to see me, as well as my sister, my older sister. And I had to ask them to leave so I could have one-on-one time with my mother. I’m looking in her eyes and she wouldn’t look at me.

I had to tell her, “Everything is all right. I know you have all these things going on in your mind and you’re thinking something’s happening to me. Nothing is happening to me.” And the pain from seeing the hurt in her eyes, and the hurt in her face, made me reflect. Really reflect.

When I went back to my dorm room, I said to myself, “I’ll never put my mother through any hurt like that ever again.” I was going to change my ways and whatever trauma I was going through, I was going to face it and try to find a better way in how I dealt with it. That was a defining moment for me. I’m done. Seeing my mother hurt like that, that was it. I had to make a change.

Megan North (06:56)
Yeah. And in a way, I guess at the time it would have been terribly hurtful for you. But if she hadn’t reacted like that, maybe your response might have been different. So you know, if she had been really loving and forgiving, and it doesn’t matter what you do, you may not have taken as much responsibility.

Whereas seeing that with her, that’s really, I’m hoping now that you can reflect on that as a beautiful moment in your life. And I think it also comes to a point, doesn’t it, where we think, “I don’t want to hold on to the story anymore. I want to work through the story, heal the story, and for it not to control me anymore.” There’s no benefit to me holding on to it anymore.

Lawyer Johnson (07:32)
Yes.

Megan North (07:52)
Yeah, it’s really beautiful. Wow. So that was the defining moment, and then you started to build businesses. You really got into the business side of things.

Lawyer Johnson (08:15)
Yes. I really got into the business side of things. I was just blessed that change, from me seeing my mother, confronting my trauma, not running anymore, made me sit still and say, “Okay, I need to do something to prepare myself when I get on the outside.”

Because I just can’t go out there the same way I came in, with nothing. I had to come back out with something, so I could cling on to it and develop myself to become better and a more functional individual in society.

So what I did when I was locked up, I partook in programs that were going to help me. That’s why I got my electrical wiring certificate in prison. I took up human relations classes so I could understand people and how to deal with people. I took up classes on how to do interviews.

So when I came home, I went through temp services. Most of them were always like, “We can’t give you this job because you have a felony.” But then I got this job at a Fortune 500 company. The owner at the time, he was the one that gave me an opportunity.

I started at this company as a temp, but I worked so hard they said, “Man, we’ve got to bring you on full time.” During that course of the two years working for that company, I got to the point where I wanted to tell the owner about my background, and he stopped me in my tracks. He said, “Listen, I don’t care about your background. I care about you. All I care about is you showing up every day and giving it all you have within you.”

That right there put me on that straight path. I ended up working for that company for 18 years, and I retired from that company. That guy became my mentor. One of the greatest moments was when he told me, “I’m so proud of the man that you have become.” That broke my heart, in a good way. I was like, “Man, you know, I have really changed.”

They paid for all my education to go all around the country to get certifications. I was blessed with a beautiful mentor, who was a master electrician. He taught me everything. He wouldn’t let me cut corners. If he saw something wrong, he’d tear it all back down and make me do it the right way. He made sure I was equipped, and that my mind was mentally calloused to handle pressure.

He told me, “Lawyer, if you come work for me, I guarantee I teach you everything I know, but you have to commit that you’re going to work with me 100%.” He said, “Even if you don’t decide to stay with me, you’ll have enough certificates to carry into your next endeavours in life.”

And I did. When I retired after 18 years, that’s when entrepreneurship came in. I took all the certificates they gave me and rolled that into a contractor company. I became a general contractor. I started remodelling homes. The first job I got was for $30,000. I remodelled a whole townhouse by myself.

From that $30,000, another job came to me, to remodel and convert a monastery school into a pet daycare. That was a $200,000 job. And then the blessings just kept pouring on and pouring on.

So when I do my reflection, all those blessings come from me looking at my mother and telling her I wasn’t going to do this anymore. Me committing to going to school. Me preparing myself. Me getting out in this world, taking whatever I could get, but not giving up. And the owner giving me the opportunity, not judging me for my past, judging me for my character. That’s the whole story of the entrepreneurship.

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