Mia met the man who would become her husband when they were attending the same junior college. She was 16; he was 21.

They soon married and moved to Alabama where they both attended college on scholarships, hers to study nursing and his for track. Her husband was a world-class runner but sustained a career-ending knee injury in 1992 before leaving college.

That's when things changed.

ESCALATING VIOLENCE

One day, during his recovery, he threw a remote so hard at Mia that it broke her nose. "He would hit me, kick me, hold a gun to my head, lock me in the house. One time he set the house on fire," Mia says. Fortunately, she convinced him to put it out before anyone got hurt.

"It got worse and worse," she recounts. "We got in a fight before, where he pushed me down. I hit my head on the bedrail, where the metal part of the frame was. And I don't even know how long I was out, but I was out long enough that when I woke up it was dinnertime. The only the thing I could think of was, 'I need to fix dinner.'"

Despite all the trauma, she never called the police. Up to this point, her husband hadn't physically abused any of her three children. But when her son turned 8 he started stepping in to protect Mommy. One day Mia's husband beat their son so badly that in the moment the boy lost control of his bodily functions.

STARTING OVER

Mia was released in August of 2002. Her now ex-husband had moved the family to Texas, so Mia followed. She figured she would just pick up where she left off. "But I realized that I couldn't get a job," she says. "JCPenney's hired me. But I ended up getting fired because they found out that I had a criminal background."

It took a while before finding work doing odd jobs like installing wiring for traffic lights and working in a call center. She eventually got a job as a manager at Subway. "I saved enough money to get an apartment," Mia says, "but then I realized that some apartments wouldn't let you live there because you had a criminal background."

She remembers how frustrating it was: "I did my time. I did everything they told me to do, and I'm still living as if I'm a prisoner. The bad day I had in my past should not predict everything that happens in my future. And that's what I learned going to prison, that society has said that your past negates anything you want to do in the future."