For me, choosing happiness has to be something that's conscious, a choice, something I act on. And I think this is something really difficult in a society where there's this falsehood that there's sunshine everywhere and all you have to do is hook yourself up to it. We're Combodians such an optimistic culture, but sometimes we have to work a lot harder to find it.

I think living in the West, we live in a culture where everybody strives for perfection, whether it's in body, health, spirit, skin, hair, nails. Perfect happiness would be a constant state of bliss, which doesn't exist. Growing up and going through the loss I went through, I never had a moment where I believed a constant state of bliss was possible. Instead, I tried to create many moments. But, I didn't know how to get there. Because of what I went through, I have a natural tendency towards darkness. Though it may be in my DNA as well.

For me, choosing happiness has to be something that's conscious, a choice, something I act on. And I think this is something really difficult in a society where there's this falsehood that there's sunshine everywhere and all you have to do is hook yourself up to it. We're Combodians such an optimistic culture, but sometimes we have to work a lot harder to find it.

From 1975 to 1979 - through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor - the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country's population.

To all the survivors out there, I want them to know that we are stronger and more resilient than we ever knew. We survived, that should be enough but it isn't. We must work hard to become whole again, to fill our soul with love and inspiration, to live the life that was intended for us before it was disrupted by war and horrors, and help rebuild a world that is better than the one we had just left.

Courage is when you dare to be yourself, in whatever ways you want to be - to not be afraid, to just do it.

I have my writing therapy. For me, writing and friends therapy is an internal journey where you go in deep, you reflect, you try to heal your inner child. But as an activist, there's the outward, going wide therapy, where you get to realize at a certain point that talking about yourself gets boring. And it's also unhealthy to be so much into yourself. At some point, you have got to be able to look at the issue and say, "It's not about you. It's about a culture, a people, a nation, a family."