“I just never felt safe,” says Jessica Compton, after running away from a young life of kidnapping, abuse, and sexual assault. Deciding it was best she take care of herself, she lived on her own at the age of 16, working and paying her bills. During this time, drugs and alcohol numbed the pain, but lead to arson, assaults, and eventually, incarceration.

“The cell saved me,” she says. “I saved myself.”

After prison, she graduated college to be a correctional officer, and spent almost fourteen years as a youth worker, supporting aggressive youth, before founding Trees Of Stars, an arts and culture non-profit. But because of her criminal record, she worked in construction for almost eleven years before being able to work in her profession, as waited for her pardon. Her new book, Bits And Pieces, is a peer-support memoir, and available now.

It took Jessica eleven years to be pardoned.

Eleven years of putting the Bits And Pieces together again.

Eleven years to find freedom.