When you leave here today and commence the next stage of your life, you can follow someone else's script, try to make choices that will make other people happy, avoid discomfort, do what is expected, and copy the status quo. Or you can look at all that you have accomplished today and use it as fuel to venture forth and write your own story. If you do, amazing things will take shape.

I can be in a little bit of a state of overwhelm and panic if I don't start out being connected to grace and gratitude.

I'd never really heard of financial abuse, although it makes so much sense when you hear it defined.

It's exciting to me that people know that I'm someone who's very political.

I'll be honest with you. I'm a little bit of a loner. It's been a big part of my maturing process to learn to allow people to support me. I tend to be very self-reliant and private. And I have this history of wanting to work things out on my own and protect people from what's going on with me.

I feel like I barely survived Django (Unchained) emotionally - the violence, hearing the N-word every day. It cost me a lot psychologically, but it was worth it to tell that story.

To meet somebody who's able to harness the level of courage it takes to walk away and to choose your own life and your own health, the well-being of your family, is really inspiring.