The truth is, we all face hardships of some kind, and you never know the struggles a person is going through. Behind every smile, there's a story of a personal struggle.

We define family in many different ways: not just by blood but by people with whom we find a common ground and a common bond.

I learned that, with grief, you have to take it one day at a time and learn how to find the happiness amid the heartbreak.

We think of our prison inmates as the dregs of society, and we scorn them and push them off to the side and forget about them. We have to remember that they are humans, and they have rights, and yes, they did wrong, but we all have one shot at doing wrong, you know?

At some point, we have to move away from the pack to take certain journeys on our own.

I connected to this idea of faith and spirituality and religion and Christianity being a very strong crux of who I am at the core and how a lot of what we think and believe is based around our spiritual beliefs.