“My story really starts at the age of six. My parents divorced at the age of 4, but my story really starts at six and it starts in a dark, brutal place—being abused by my stepmother for two years, being beaten with 2x4s, being told I was a devil’s child and that I didn’t deserve to live. Being locked into a dark cage outside in the desert heat of Arizona and just being treated inhumanely. I wasn’t human. I wasn’t worthy of the life I lived. I wasn’t worthy of the time and love that I deserved and that’s what I knew for two years. To find that hope, to continue on in that time, I can’t say I really had memories of that happening because I was so young and didn’t know what hope was.”