Piercefield Impact Network, Inc.

October 17th. A date that’s burned into my heart. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year. One whole year since that night — since everything changed. Around this time, I heard the sound that made my heart stop. Auston had fallen from his bunk. I didn’t see it happen, but I’ll never forget what came after — the silence, the panic, the helplessness that filled the room. There are some moments you can never unhear, never unfeel, and that one will stay with me for the rest of my life. I remember the chaos. The fear. The way time stopped, and all I could do was hope it wasn’t real. They took him away, and then came the silence — days of not knowing anything, of praying that maybe, somehow, he’d be okay. But on Sunday, October 20th, I got the confirmation I’d been dreading. Auston was gone. It doesn’t feel like a year has passed. Some days it feels like it just happened. Other days, it feels like a lifetime ago — like the world has moved on, but I’m still standing there, staring at the floor,...

I’ve never been one to really take fortune cookies seriously. Honestly, I usually just read them for a laugh or to see what silly little nugget of “wisdom” they give. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re just random, and usually, I just forget about them as soon as I finish the cookie. Today, though, something happened that made me pause. I went to Panda Express because I was craving some Chinese food, enjoyed my meal, and then, as usual, cracked open my fortune cookie. I read it, smiled, ate the cookie—and then I stopped. The fortune said: “Your hard work will soften the troubles of others.” Now, I don’t believe in predicting the future with little slips of paper, but that one line… it hit me. Hard. It made me think about all the nonprofit work I’m planning, the efforts I want to put into helping incarcerated people, and the ministry work I hope to grow. All of that work—every project, every idea, every late night and early morning—has one goal: to make someone’s life a little e...

We live in a world that’s quick to judge and slow to understand. In a society obsessed with labels, people are too often reduced to a single chapter of their story—one choice, one failure, one moment of weakness. And what’s worse is that once that label is stuck to someone, it’s nearly impossible to peel off. No matter how hard a person works to grow, to change, to make amends, they remain shackled to that one moment. To most people, you are no longer a human being—you’re a headline, a record, a rumor. That’s the tragedy of our world today. We preach about second chances, but in practice, we rarely offer them. It’s as if the minute someone stumbles, society is ready with a permanent marker to write “failure,” “criminal,” “addict,” “felon,” or “broken” across their identity. But what gives us the right to define someone by their lowest point and ignore everything they’ve done since? Isn’t that the very definition of injustice? People are not their worst moments. They are not the mistake...