About eight years ago, I worked one of the toughest jobs of my life: serving as the Director of Mental Health Services in a correctional facility. It stretched me, challenged me, and changed me in ways I’m still unpacking.

People used to ask me, “Weren’t you scared?” Not really.

Because when you see people’s humanity — and you treat them like human beings — the fear dissolves. The separation dissolves. The illusion of “us” and “them” dissolves.

The truth is, a few bad choices, a few traumatic turns, a few moments of survival over strategy… and any one of us, or someone we love, could end up behind those walls. I wasn’t planning on it, of course — but that’s the point. Life is fragile. Circumstances are unpredictable. Humanity is shared.

And those 300 people respected me for one reason: I treated them with dignity. I tried to help. I saw them.

That alone is a message for all of us.

We walk through the world acting like we’re fundamentally different from the person on the street corner, the person in withdrawal, the person who’s been incarcerated. We judge their histories without ever knowing the story underneath.

With permission, I want to share one story that changed me forever.

There was a woman in our facility who had been in and out of corrections since she was nine years old. Nine. Her mother was shot in front of her by her pimp. She was placed in foster care and bounced through thirty placements — thirty — before she finally ran away. She was abused in several of those homes. By fifteen, the streets felt safer than the system.

She survived the only ways she knew how: selling drugs, working for a pimp, doing whatever it took to stay alive. For the next decade and a half, she lived in a cycle of trauma, exploitation, and incarceration.

When she was thirty, a man picked her and several other women up to “party.” He drove them under a bridge and shot each one of them in the back of the head. She was the only one who survived.

By the time she landed in my facility, she was tough. Hardened. A constant challenge. One day, an officer brought her to my office because she couldn’t calm down. She looked at me — this white woman with pink nails — and said:

“What is a fing white lady gonna tell me?!"

 She wasn’t wrong.

I looked at her and said, “You’re right. I have no idea what it’s like to be you. But I want you to tell me.”

She stared at me and said, “You can’t handle what I have to tell you.”

I said, “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m open.”

And she told me everything I just told you.

Over time, we built something real. I encouraged her to work on her GED. To try therapy. To consider job placement before release. She resisted, then softened, then tried.

Fast forward a year.

I was walking out of the courthouse when I heard someone yell, “Leslie!”

I turned around and saw a well‑dressed woman walking toward me. I didn’t recognize her at first. She smiled and said her name.

I was stunned.

She told me she had her first job — filing in an office. She had an apartment with assistance. She was clean. She was still working on her GED and had already passed a section.

I cannot tell you the impact this woman has had on my life. She taught me more about oneness and humanity than any training, degree, or title ever could.

And what she taught me stayed with me long after I left that job. It changed the way I see people, the way I understand suffering, and the way I define love. As Valentine’s Day approaches, I keep coming back to that truth: love isn’t just romance. It’s recognition. It’s oneness. It’s remembering that we belong to each other.

 The Valentine’s Day Truth

Valentine’s Day tends to shrink love down to romance, roses, and curated moments. But real love — the kind that transforms us — is bigger.

Love is seeing the humanity in someone the world has discarded. Love is refusing to believe in separation. Love is remembering that every person you meet carries a story you know nothing about. Love is understanding that we belong to each other.

This woman taught me that.

So this Valentine’s Day, I’m celebrating the kind of love that doesn’t require a partner, a holiday, or a box of chocolates.

I’m celebrating the love that says:

“Your humanity is my humanity. Your story matters. And we rise together.”