What a tale Yalonda Long tells.  Her story begins in small town, Kansas, where this daughter of a barber and a beautician mother was raised with her two brothers in a strict Jehovah’s Witness household.  As a teenager, there was no going to the movie theater unaccompanied, no boyfriends, and no parties.  Even higher education was forbidden, so when Yalonda graduated from high school, a week later she headed West to Colorado to start her life.

“I tried to learn as much about the world as I could from the public education I had because I knew I wasn’t going to college,” says Long.  “But because I spent much of my life as the outsider looking in, I learned to be a great observer and I notice everything. That would wind up serving me quite well.” (more…)