Minnesota shaped me before Atlanta claimed me.
I grew up in Minnesota in a community that took care of its own. Neighbors watched each other's kids. Church basements doubled as classrooms. When someone stumbled, the block caught them before the system did. That's the first frame I ever had for justice — a small, stubborn kind of grace passed between ordinary people.
Atlanta showed me what happens when that grace disappears.
When I moved to Atlanta, I started meeting women who had come home from prison and were told, in a hundred small ways, that they weren't welcome back. Locked out of housing. Kept from their kids. Turned away from work because of a decade-old charge they'd already served time for.
I watched the same story repeat until I couldn't stand not doing something about it. In 2020, I founded Project Restart Atlanta — not a shelter, not a handout, but a bridge. Housing referrals, custody advocacy, employer partnerships, and the kind of unglamorous logistics that turn a release date into a life.
“Knowledge is a resource that is only valuable if demonstrated or shared.”
The work has a voice now — and it's writing a book.
Today I direct programming at Common Good Atlanta, run TK Home Staging, sit on panels, take the mic on Radio X, and — finally — I'm writing it all down. The book, Obstruction of Injustice: The Legacy Project, is the piece that stitches the years together: a book about what reentry actually looks like from the inside of the fight.
