Life & Work with Crystal Hester

Today we’d like to introduce you to Crystal Hester.

Crystal, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My life came from a very tumultuous childhood and even teen years which were from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. The abuse left scars both physically and emotionally. I developed an eating disorder at age 7 which carried with me most of my life.

I began getting in trouble in school just for attention yet the teachers/school staff took me under their wings and still to this day, I remain close to most of them. They believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself.

As a teen, I got into actual criminal trouble but completed the requirements of my sentence. I always excelled at school, played a wide variety of sports, and also was in choir and band from 3rd grade thru my senior year.

In my freshman year, I decided I wanted to join the army and I left for boot camp in 1997. Joining the US ARMY was one of my greatest accomplishments. I ended up being medically discharged and while discharged I longed to be back in.

At the age of 21, I began my adult life of breaking the law and eventually my charges led to a 16-year sentence for fraud and money laundering. I felt my sentence received was harsh at the time but later realized that being incarcerated changed my life for the better. While inside for 7 years, I completed 2 college programs and many other programs to ensure I would be a productive citizen upon release.

While incarcerated, I began to experience the grief of my abuse and what I lost. I was pregnant with my first child and delivering a child while incarcerated is one of the toughest things anyone can experience mentally. I got 3 days with my daughter before returning as an inmate.

Upon my release in 2005, I started working 2 jobs, moved out on my own 3 months later, and in 2014, I was successfully discharged from parole and never entered into a corrections institution again. Freedom does come with a price and many are not successful. It was not easy, it wasn’t easy bonding with a child, losing a second child, and just the challenges of having a number behind your name.

The abuse held me into many many lifestyles that weren’t always productive including the club scene, stingers lifestyle, and living within the LGBT community. I always felt God could never change my life and I was too much less for Him to.

I faced losing my entire family within 3.5 years which was difficult. Being an orphan in your 30s is hard yet I always pushed forward. I graduated from nursing school in 2011 and never imagined I would be my mom’s nurse in her final days. She passed in 2012. I also experienced pretty complicated medical issues as well as mental ones. Numerous surgeries and hospital stays, facing death on numerous occasions and all the while doing everything alone.

In June 2021, my world as I knew it came to a screeching halt as I knew it. I was violently assaulted and found out my daughter being strung out on drugs tried to kill a police officer and was arrested. I kept the assault to myself which resulted in me trying to commit suicide 3 times within 5 days.

I survived although I struggled for the next year. In June 2022, a shift took place in my life leading to the freedom I never knew could be felt. I felt true joy for the first time in my life. There was a hidden part of my life that was buried and after following an unexpected 4-month extreme medical battle I once again planned to end my life. The difference was I had an army of support that when I began to reach out prayed me through.

It was in March 2023 that I finally had a true deceleration of healing, a true freedom and life has been a better journey since.

I now speak to other women about the cycles that will keep them bound into the judicial system, that there truly is freedom from your past, and I share my being set free from the LGBT lifestyle. Just because you have been assigned a “number” doesn’t define you. You can be successful and change not only your life but the lives of others also. I have many mentors that are still in my life and have stepped into roles of family where I feel I am accepted again.

Today, I have my own business as a pet sitter and stockpiler. I use my talents to help my church, my community, and many who are being released from incarceration. I have a very close connection to our Police and first responders, I do animal rescue and foster to help save the lives of many scared, abused, and neglected animals.

I am also working on a book that is almost finished. I have a goal to have this book a best seller and for it to reach the hands of every person incarcerated.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No from having the stigma of being a felon.

Deaths in my family, medical situations, struggles with mental health, and at times facing the uncertainty of how I would eat or possibly be homeless

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a pet sitter, I do stockpile sales, and I foster animals for many rescues.