I am six years old and instead of celebrating with birthday cakes, I chew on a piece of charcoal.

When I approach a more mature age, I am not going to live in America. Visiting my grandmother, when she was 94, which is a very long life in Cambodia, I saw how important it was that she was in a community with my sisters, brothers and all grandchildren were so involved in her life. I liked that experience so much more than visiting my sister-in-law's grandparents in a nursing home. It's about looking at a community through your window versus being part of a community that's alive, that is youthful and old and hungry and smelly and loud, where everything is vibrant and colorful.

I am six years old and instead of celebrating with birthday cakes, I chew on a piece of charcoal.

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

In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.

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.

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.