Nothing good could ever have come of my life if I hadn't been able to get therapy and overcome my addictions.
Education, hard work, dedication, a support system, and knowing my life had value - these were what had made all the difference.
I went to pick my son up from school and walked him back and was in the house preparing dinner, and he came in the house and gave me this flower of chrysanthemum that was full of ants. And he went back out to play and ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The car happened to be driven by a LAPD detective.
A New Way of Life is a safe house that women can come to after they're released from prison in South Los Angeles. It's a place for women to detox the trauma, the torture of incarceration, be welcomed and embraced and live and begin their new path to - if it's recovery or receiving mental health services, go back to school, get their children back.
I knew I wasn't born to be caged and chained up.
The person who has been convicted has served their time. Why would we continue to punish and exclude them from housing and jobs? Those are the primary areas that allow people to get their lives back on track.
It would have been great if there were a trauma center located in our community, where you could access grief counseling and be able to address it in a healthy manner.
I knew hundreds and hundreds of women like me, who had traveled in and out of prison in a revolving door. They needed support and help just like I had received. And it could make a difference, just like it had made a difference in my life. I wanted to see them come back to the community and have a chance at a different life, too.
I can remember, as a child, the happy days of us all piling into the car and going to the drive-in. And that was a weekly routine for my father. He was a proud black man, and that all sort of vanished as America began to export jobs.
In prison, you're issued a number of sanitary pads per month. And many times, even when you're issued a number of sanitary pads, the guards will just come in and rip your room apart, rip your locker apart and take them.
Insulin is a crisis medication.
When you get locked up, you get locked out.
It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery other than in prisons - but it was a lie that you regained your freedom once you left the prison gates.
At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.
Life has took me on a journey, and through much of that journey, I didn't feel whole, connected, and grounded. So as a kid, everyone called me Sue. My daddy called me Susie Q. But through this journey, I've sort of risen to a place that I get this level of respect of Ms. Burton.
It's important the sheriff and the D.A. work with the community to realize real-world solutions. If they make decisions in silos, it will fall short.
Telling your story is transformative. For both the storyteller and their audience, a new bridge to understanding is created.
I got caught back up in the underworld because the upperworld really doesn't have a place for people with criminal histories.
People are released from prison so unprepared. They give you $200. We call it gate money. And you have to pay for a bus ticket back to L.A. You get off the Greyhound bus, downtown Skid Row, and you're supposed to make a life from that.
