I remember standing in the doorway of
our home with my mother and father on
either side of me they each had me about
one of my arms and we’re pulling me back
and forth dad pulling me into the house
and mom pulling me back out they just
had another huge fight and mom once
again claimed that she was leaving she
already had some suitcases and my sister
in the car all she needed now was me but
of course dad wasn’t having that and so
I stood there between them crying
uncontrollably as they screamed at each
other and yanked me back and forth in
and out of the house eventually mom got
her way and I left with her but by the
end of the day we’d all be back under
the same roof pretending that nothing
had ever happened the home environment
that I grew up in was both lonely and
hostile for the vast majority of my
childhood I felt alienated like I was
hated yet completely irrelevant I felt
more like an object than a person the
indifference with which my parents
treated me made me feel as though I had
no connection to humanity and throughout
my entire childhood backed up until just
two months ago I had harbored a dark
secret that I’d never told anyone in my
entire life when I was a child I was
sexually abused multiple times by two
different people both of whom I loved
and trusted growing up I felt like there
wasn’t a soul in the world that I could
tell I was the son and I was smart and I
was expected to be strong and tough and
but I wasn’t okay I felt alone alone and
ashamed and disgusting confused weak
hurt scared and I had no one no one took
confide in to cry to to hold me and tell
me that it was gonna be okay that it
so I stuffed this secret down deep deep
down and tried to pretend as though it
never happened there it festered for
years that would carry those feelings
with me every single day as time went on
it seemed like every person I
encountered in the world used and took
advantage of me took my kindness for
weakness and then discarded me like a
piece of trash I was bullied at school
as well as at home and in the process I
became extremely introverted the only
person who I would come to think
genuinely cared about me was a man named
Boris Boris worked with my mother and
over time he became a mentor to me a big
brother even a father figure he would
come over and talk to me spend time with
me even take me to football games the
connection that I developed with him
made the pain that I was feeling
bearable when I was 12 years old my
mother fell ill she was diagnosed with
fibromyalgia and trigeminal neuralgia
neurological disorders that cause
debilitating pain for a long time she
was bedridden and because there was
nobody else around my sister and I had
to take care of her feeder help her in
and out of the bathroom holder while she
had seizure
older while she cried it tore me apart
to watch her fade away like that and in
a way it hurt me to have to comfort her
in the way that I had so desperately
wanted her to comfort me as a child in
the middle of all this I was at my
sister’s boyfriend’s house when I got a
phone call from my mom she was crying
hysterically and kept trying to say
something that I couldn’t understand I
asked again mom what’s wrong what’s
going on what she said shattered my
Boris is dead over the next couple days
I would come and find out that Boris had
taken his own life
the person that I respected most my
friend my brother my loving parental
figure had taken himself away from me he
was gone my connection to humanity was
severed I fell into a deep depression
even deeper than the one that I was
already in I stole a handful of pain
pills from my mom’s purse over the
course of a month and tried to overdose
I failed and woke up in a pile of my own
vomit but as time went on all of this
hurt started to turn into anger I felt
this uncontrollable rage that grew
stronger with each passing day I hated
the people who had hurt me
and as this hate continued to grow I
would come to hate all of humanity but
deep down most of all I hated myself and
I wanted this world that had hurt me so
when nobody cares about you
and the people who are supposed to care
deliberately hurt you it is hard to care
about others and when you feel that you
have no connection to humanity it
becomes easy to lash out at it that’s
exactly what I did all of this pain this
rage consumed me and I did horrible
things to people who never deserve to be
hurt in the end I became the same kind
of person that I had hated to begin with
someone who blindly hurt other people
my rage against humanity landed me in
juvenile hall and to my surprise the
staff there were some of the kindest
people that I’ve ever met they taught me
more about compassion than I can even
begin to put into words but when I was
transferred to the California Youth
Authority I would question everything
that I thought I had learned back in
juvie the cya institution where I was
sent was extremely violent on an almost
daily basis and living in that type of
environment brought a lot of that old
anger and hatred that I thought I had
let go right back to the surface but
something was different this time
because I had felt what it was like to
be truly cared for to be connected to so
many different people back in juvenile
hall and once you’ve experienced
something like that it’s hard to look
away when I turned 18 I was transferred
to adult prison this was not an easy
transition I ended up living with a very
violent hateful man who had lash out at
me and starts cell fights almost every
day it was after about a month of this
that I realized something
I saw myself in him and that freaked me
out I knew then that if I didn’t truly
commit to changing if I kept allowing
myself to be trapped by my emotions and
to be disconnected from humanity that he
is who I would become and that was the
shortly after this revelation I had
another one equally impactful I realized
that I didn’t understand who I was I
didn’t understand why I’d done a lot of
the things that I’d done and that deeply
bothered me because none of those things
made any sense so it was then after
finding a powerful desire to let my
hatred go to seek out human connection
and to gain understanding of myself that
I also began to want to understand other
people as well the things about them
that didn’t make any sense to me it
occurred to me that once you understand
something then you can begin to humanize
it and view it with compassion and
empathy during this process I would find
out just how much racism was a part of
prison life and racism being something I
had never understood I decided that
understanding and humanizing it would
become a part of my transformation and
what better way to do that than talking
to a professional racist skinhead but it
was only when I looked at this
intimidating figure on the yard as a
person that I got the courage to strike
up a conversation after making small
talk for a while I finally broached the
sensitive subject and asked him how he
ended up the way that he was to my
surprise he was actually forthcoming
told me how he grew up in a racist
family with an abusive father and then
when he was a teenager he met a group of
guys skinheads
who gave him the acceptance and positive
reinforcement that he had been craving
for most of his
life my being able to connect with this
man as a human being only further
strengthened my resolution to let go of
hate to gain understanding and to
there’s an old saying that until about
nine months ago I’d never heard hurt
people hurt people meaning people who
are hurting hurt others when I heard
that saying it was as though suddenly
the entire world made sense to me I came
to realize that there are no such things
as evil people in this world only
damaged people it took me coming to
prison to find the true value of human
connection but if I could find it behind
these walls there isn’t a doubt in my
mind that any one of you can find it out
there and so I urge all of you to
actively participate in further
developing your connection to humanity
whether it’s through volunteer work
reaching out to someone in need or
simply by embracing those who are
different from us we have to be better
than hate we have to be better than fear
we must learn to respond with love even
in the most difficult of situations but
above all else when this world seems to
inhumane for us to bear we must always
[Applause] [Music]
our home with my mother and father on
either side of me they each had me about
one of my arms and we’re pulling me back
and forth dad pulling me into the house
and mom pulling me back out they just
had another huge fight and mom once
again claimed that she was leaving she
already had some suitcases and my sister
in the car all she needed now was me but
of course dad wasn’t having that and so
I stood there between them crying
uncontrollably as they screamed at each
other and yanked me back and forth in
and out of the house eventually mom got
her way and I left with her but by the
end of the day we’d all be back under
the same roof pretending that nothing
had ever happened the home environment
that I grew up in was both lonely and
hostile for the vast majority of my
childhood I felt alienated like I was
hated yet completely irrelevant I felt
more like an object than a person the
indifference with which my parents
treated me made me feel as though I had
no connection to humanity and throughout
my entire childhood backed up until just
two months ago I had harbored a dark
secret that I’d never told anyone in my
entire life when I was a child I was
sexually abused multiple times by two
different people both of whom I loved
and trusted growing up I felt like there
wasn’t a soul in the world that I could
tell I was the son and I was smart and I
was expected to be strong and tough and
but I wasn’t okay I felt alone alone and
ashamed and disgusting confused weak
hurt scared and I had no one no one took
confide in to cry to to hold me and tell
me that it was gonna be okay that it
so I stuffed this secret down deep deep
down and tried to pretend as though it
never happened there it festered for
years that would carry those feelings
with me every single day as time went on
it seemed like every person I
encountered in the world used and took
advantage of me took my kindness for
weakness and then discarded me like a
piece of trash I was bullied at school
as well as at home and in the process I
became extremely introverted the only
person who I would come to think
genuinely cared about me was a man named
Boris Boris worked with my mother and
over time he became a mentor to me a big
brother even a father figure he would
come over and talk to me spend time with
me even take me to football games the
connection that I developed with him
made the pain that I was feeling
bearable when I was 12 years old my
mother fell ill she was diagnosed with
fibromyalgia and trigeminal neuralgia
neurological disorders that cause
debilitating pain for a long time she
was bedridden and because there was
nobody else around my sister and I had
to take care of her feeder help her in
and out of the bathroom holder while she
had seizure
older while she cried it tore me apart
to watch her fade away like that and in
a way it hurt me to have to comfort her
in the way that I had so desperately
wanted her to comfort me as a child in
the middle of all this I was at my
sister’s boyfriend’s house when I got a
phone call from my mom she was crying
hysterically and kept trying to say
something that I couldn’t understand I
asked again mom what’s wrong what’s
going on what she said shattered my
Boris is dead over the next couple days
I would come and find out that Boris had
taken his own life
the person that I respected most my
friend my brother my loving parental
figure had taken himself away from me he
was gone my connection to humanity was
severed I fell into a deep depression
even deeper than the one that I was
already in I stole a handful of pain
pills from my mom’s purse over the
course of a month and tried to overdose
I failed and woke up in a pile of my own
vomit but as time went on all of this
hurt started to turn into anger I felt
this uncontrollable rage that grew
stronger with each passing day I hated
the people who had hurt me
and as this hate continued to grow I
would come to hate all of humanity but
deep down most of all I hated myself and
I wanted this world that had hurt me so
when nobody cares about you
and the people who are supposed to care
deliberately hurt you it is hard to care
about others and when you feel that you
have no connection to humanity it
becomes easy to lash out at it that’s
exactly what I did all of this pain this
rage consumed me and I did horrible
things to people who never deserve to be
hurt in the end I became the same kind
of person that I had hated to begin with
someone who blindly hurt other people
my rage against humanity landed me in
juvenile hall and to my surprise the
staff there were some of the kindest
people that I’ve ever met they taught me
more about compassion than I can even
begin to put into words but when I was
transferred to the California Youth
Authority I would question everything
that I thought I had learned back in
juvie the cya institution where I was
sent was extremely violent on an almost
daily basis and living in that type of
environment brought a lot of that old
anger and hatred that I thought I had
let go right back to the surface but
something was different this time
because I had felt what it was like to
be truly cared for to be connected to so
many different people back in juvenile
hall and once you’ve experienced
something like that it’s hard to look
away when I turned 18 I was transferred
to adult prison this was not an easy
transition I ended up living with a very
violent hateful man who had lash out at
me and starts cell fights almost every
day it was after about a month of this
that I realized something
I saw myself in him and that freaked me
out I knew then that if I didn’t truly
commit to changing if I kept allowing
myself to be trapped by my emotions and
to be disconnected from humanity that he
is who I would become and that was the
shortly after this revelation I had
another one equally impactful I realized
that I didn’t understand who I was I
didn’t understand why I’d done a lot of
the things that I’d done and that deeply
bothered me because none of those things
made any sense so it was then after
finding a powerful desire to let my
hatred go to seek out human connection
and to gain understanding of myself that
I also began to want to understand other
people as well the things about them
that didn’t make any sense to me it
occurred to me that once you understand
something then you can begin to humanize
it and view it with compassion and
empathy during this process I would find
out just how much racism was a part of
prison life and racism being something I
had never understood I decided that
understanding and humanizing it would
become a part of my transformation and
what better way to do that than talking
to a professional racist skinhead but it
was only when I looked at this
intimidating figure on the yard as a
person that I got the courage to strike
up a conversation after making small
talk for a while I finally broached the
sensitive subject and asked him how he
ended up the way that he was to my
surprise he was actually forthcoming
told me how he grew up in a racist
family with an abusive father and then
when he was a teenager he met a group of
guys skinheads
who gave him the acceptance and positive
reinforcement that he had been craving
for most of his
life my being able to connect with this
man as a human being only further
strengthened my resolution to let go of
hate to gain understanding and to
there’s an old saying that until about
nine months ago I’d never heard hurt
people hurt people meaning people who
are hurting hurt others when I heard
that saying it was as though suddenly
the entire world made sense to me I came
to realize that there are no such things
as evil people in this world only
damaged people it took me coming to
prison to find the true value of human
connection but if I could find it behind
these walls there isn’t a doubt in my
mind that any one of you can find it out
there and so I urge all of you to
actively participate in further
developing your connection to humanity
whether it’s through volunteer work
reaching out to someone in need or
simply by embracing those who are
different from us we have to be better
than hate we have to be better than fear
we must learn to respond with love even
in the most difficult of situations but
above all else when this world seems to
inhumane for us to bear we must always
[Applause] [Music]
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