later, a look at what would what to expect with the upcoming special election for u.s. senate. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] >> this week on q&a, the senior associate, tiffany wright, talks about the challenges she overcame to become a lawyer and supreme court clerk. wright, what was it like being a clerk to a justice of the supreme court? guest: it was incredible. sometimes, very overwhelming. the court is -- i describe it as a magical place. it is a white marble. every place you go in, it is

white marble. as a clerk, you get to go to the side to the golden, and that is how i voice felt the -- i always thought the honor of going to the place where the public cannot go, where the business of the court really happens. i never lost that throughout the full-year. it was a really meaningful and beautiful experience. also, very hard. host: what was your year? from what date to what date? ended july 11, 2016, and on july 7, 2017. host: who did you work for? guest: justice sotomayor. host: has there been any one like you to serve as a clerk -- why i'm asking this. guest: i don't know. tried toe reporter figure out if there had been from theecifically

particular socioeconomic background that i had, and because of the court's extreme rules about confidentiality and the sometimes unwillingness on the part of former clerks to talk about themselves and the experience, it is really hard to say things like "no one has ever," so we not sure, but my year, i was certainly the only person who was african-american in the very beginning until justice gorsuch was the only one who was a mother and the only one who came from a background like mine. host: what about age? guest: actually, it was pretty diverse in terms of age. one of my co-clerks and i were the same age, 35 and 36. there were quite a few older clerks. justices havehe gotten people straight from law school, and that is changing a lot. they are looking for people with a little more life and legal

experience, so the age of the ticking a bit upwards. host: we ask you to chat because of a man who spent a long time doing an article that ended up on the front page of "the washington post," john woodrow cox. who is he? guest: he is a reporter for "the washington post." he was working on a series of stories about children in the united states who have had experiences with violence. and i believe there were four or five stories in that series. all of them, just really heartbreaking and really beautiful, and the way that i got in contact with john is he wrote a story about a young child here in d.c. whose father had been murdered and he was six or seven. and i read that article while i was out work at the court -- at work at the court and it really hit me because i recognized a

lot of myself in the child and i felt very strongly that if i could, i would like to reach out to him and talk to him and pass on some of what i have learned and how to deal with that experience and how to push through. and to let him know there was hope on the other side, so i emailed john and i asked him if he would pass along a letter. childer i wrote for the in the article, and he said sure. i was asking if he could write an article about me. at thead a good excuse time, which is at the court does not allow us to talk to the price in any capacity, but i really needed time to think about it, because as i think it is clear in the article, a lot of what was covered in very personal, things i have not spoken about and i needed time to see if that is something i wanted to do, and once my term at the court wrapped up, i talked to my husband and some friends, and realized that the reason i reached out to john about the child in the article

was that i wanted to say to him a number of things i thought would be helpful, and if i can do that for other children, beyond this one, then that could be a really meaningful thing, and certainly something that would have meant a lot to me when i was in that place several years ago. john and i worked together over the course of a few months, talked to my husband, my family, my colleagues, my judges, and put together something that i really think is beautiful, and i said to him i am eternally grateful for the compassion and the way that he wrote the story was very -- he handled it exactly. host: front page of "the washington post." what was the reaction to it? guest: i received a lot of positive reaction. the most meaningful has been -- it confirmed why i

wrote the article in the first place which is i have gotten a lot of feedback from students and children that read the story and now see what is possible. and that has been so meaningful to me. the reaction has been amazing. emails, lots of messages. i tried in the beginning to respond to everyone of them, but the reaction so has been very heartwarming. host: your undergraduate work was where? 4 at the university of maryland in college park. host: what did you study? guest: psychology and criminal justice. host: your law degree comes from where? guest: georgetown. host: your son is how old? guest: 10. host: you met your husband where? guest: the university of maryland. host: you had a son to worry about plus your job? guest: yes.

i married well. which i think is key to a happy life. been just quite amazing in the way that he has handled all of this, because as hard as the court was, when i was in law school, i was working full-time. so, went to school at night and had to study ended law review and everything i could possibly do, and throughout all of that, i never had to worry about noel because my husband took amazing care of him and it never became an issue between the two of us. i decided to apply to the court, it is something we talked about, what the hours would be like. and how i knew that this was going to be a really demanding year, and my husband was one of my biggest supporters who pushed me and said "you should definitely do this." today, i am an associate at a

law firm in d.c. lawyer.appellate and focusing on government, facing litigation, the litigation where someone is being investigated by the government, whether state or federal or looking for a way to deal with particular challenges as a result of that. host: and what impact did being a clerk have on you getting this job? guest: my relationship actually goes back to before i was a clerk. department,ustice which is where i was for my first three years of law school to go be a summer associate. toy were kind enough recognize that by leaving the justice department, i had given up health insurance and things my family needed so they let me stay, so i worked there for my last year of law school. it was just natural for me to

return to the place i had looked at at home. host: where were you born? guest: tacoma, washington, on the fort lewis army base. host: what were your parents like at that time? how long were you there? what were they doing? after my parents married high school. they both grew up in washington. my father enrolled in the army shortly after they graduated from high school, and they both moved to washington eight to four lewis, and that is where i was born. we were there for about two years or three years before my parents separated and my mom moved back to the district and my father followed a couple of years later. host: where did you live here in the district? guest: i lived in south east, across the street from a housing development. thirteenth street is where my house was located. and i live with my grandmother, abusive marriage

in virginia and come to d.c. with her five children, and all of them, and including me and my cousin, lived in this house. my grandmother had five kids. two boys and three girls. one of them was my mom. other time i came back to the district or shortly thereafter, both of my uncles were sent to prison, convicted of -- one of them, sexual assault. the other, armed robbery. and so, for the part of my childhood that i can remember, it was my mother, her two sisters, my grandmother, and my cousins in the house on 13th street. host: what is the first thing you can remember, and at what age, that the living conditions are like? what i nowmember call chaos, so i remember the adults always coming and going. my mom worked a lot, so i

remember her not being present a lot. i remember that there was no -- knowing that there was something that they were doing that i was not allowed to see because i was always told to leave. those are my earliest memories are my cousin and i being outside, waiting for whatever was happening to finish, and i now know that that was drug use. memory, is my earliest feeling even as a child that something was not quite right. host: how old are you? guest: at that time, i must have been six or seven. host: and when did you first know what was going on and did you ask -- ever ask your mother or grandmother what was going on? guest: i was a very talkative and inquisitive child, so i did ask, and it was grown people's business. it is nothing you need to worry about. you stay out of it.

it actually was not until a little bit later that i understood what was happening, and the effects that it was having. when i i was about nine came to understand what was going on. host: how well did you know your uncles? guest: not well before they went away. i know them very well now, but they were sent away when i was still pretty young. , even as a child, i was pretty close to, because one thing that we did every saturday was my grandmother would take me , and i don't remember whether my mom went. i'm sure she did. my grandmother and i come up going to -- there was a van that had come to the department store in the district and we would go to virginia, which is where the maximum security prison was, and we would go in and visit with him, and this is something we did all the time. knowing thatmember

this was a family member and somebody that i love and feeling that this was the situation he was in and watching that there was something i could do about it so that he could come back home. and so, i did feel like i knew that uncle pretty well. host: how long was he in prison? guest: about 25 years. he was not released until i was well into adulthood. host: did you ever talk to him about his life and what happened? guest: no. i mean, one of the things about my family that is in some ways a blessing and in other ways a curse is you don't really talk about things. i think it is a survival technique. talking about things makes them more real and thinks them very difficult. -- and make some very difficult. when my uncles were released --

i did not even know what he was in prison for until i was working at the parole commission, my second job after graduating from college, and somebody at the commission says "do you know that your uncle was in jail for rape?" nobody ever talked about it. we did not talk about it. both of them have been out. i will say i am incredibly proud of them because they were released. they have worked very hard, have families, have family, and to me, demonstrate everything that is possible for people after eating released. host: where do they live? guest: still in the district. host: did they read the article? guest: i have not talked to them, so i don't know. host: did you worry at all that they would read the article? guest: i did.

quite a bitworried about, and my husband and i have had i don't know how many hours of conversation about this, is trying to strike a balance between telling my story and , not as truthful as i can wanting to make anything seem better than it was because it is not the point of the story -- the point of the story is lost. know that there is hope if you are in that situation. i did not want to cover anything up. at the same time, i felt a lot of guilt talking about other people. that were not always flattering. so i worried extensively about it. understanding and wrote the story, particularly certain parts that i worry about very delicately, so i do worry about that. i still worry about that.

thanksgiving might be really interesting. host: where would you spend thanksgiving? guest: my parents now live in richmond. my mom remarried my stepfather, who i don't call my stepfather except when i am trying to explain situations like this. a second father is pastor of church in richmond, and when i left to go to the university of maryland, they moved to richmond, so they have been there since 1999 or so, and that is where we traditionally spend thanksgiving. host: when you were growing up, how was your schoolwork, how were your grades? guest: they were great. my something found a box in his room that i had been keeping in his closet that had all sorts of things. and one of them was a collection of the report cards, and so, the grades were great. the behavior was not always great. -- being very

talkative, and i noticed around the time my father died, it was very interesting. you would think it was the opposite way, that my behavior became much better and i became owner for student in terms of grades and my behavior, which improved a lot. host: 1989, your father died how? father was a correctional officer here in d.c. at d.c. jail, said he kept really great -- so he kept really grea late hours. knocked -- someone knocked on the door and when he answered it, he was shocked to that. host: where were you at the time? .uest: i was with my mother that is all but i want to say about that. host: i don't know how far you want to go back, but what was the impact on you at the time? was --the impact on me

it was tremendous. it was definitely the most devastating but also the most transformational moments of my life. me -- i believe it was the next day -- that he had in fact died. thought that i understood what that meant, but this was my first experience with that. i don't think i even had a pet that died. she said he was in heaven, but we went to the funeral and i remember he was there, his body was there, and he looked so much like he did in life that i that heaven must be here on earth because he is just here in his sleep. it was not until i touched him and realized that he was gone because the body was so cold and he was lifeless. that point.rief at

it was a form of fear that was very extreme. the best way i can describe it is you have a nightmare, you wake up, and for a few seconds, you don't know if it is real. so the stomach dropping and just feeling in the fight or flight moment is how i felt. that is my memory from the funeral, and is -- i walked around like that for a long time. host: what was your relationship with him? guest: my father was very quiet. he was not shy, but he was quiet. he had a lot of presence. and so, for me, and i think this must be true with most children, he was definitely my security. and i looked at him as invincible. and even though i thought -- i

think i had some inkling that things were not the safest when he was there. i did feel safe. that is what he was for me. strength, and he, for somehat reason, very much believed in me even though i was young, and so, always would tell me that i have so much potential and can be great, whatever i want to be. so he was both my security and my sort of confidence. in the way that i lost him, it was incredibly difficult. host: for someone that has never been to washington, and you say you lived in southeast washington, and not many people there get to do or can do what you're doing. explain that. this has been -- when i

the heightup, it was of the crack cocaine epidemic. d.c., which traditionally has thet 90 to 100 homicides, year my father was killed had 489. and most of those were in southeast, and there are some neighborhoods were that it's really concentrated. the gardens area is one. the area known as -- were just centers for a lot of crime, a lot of very serious drug use, the way the neighborhood was described, which was an open-air market for drugs. that is what it was like. it's very different now. i don't recognize it now. it was very poor and hit very hard by crack cocaine.

host: how many people in your family got on drugs? guest: all of them except my grandmother. my grandmother, who passed away in 2008, she to my knowledge never did drugs. she struggled a lot with alcohol. that is how she dealt with what must've been a very difficult time. she works very hard every day she was gone before 5 a.m. and came up and did it -- she worked hard every day. she was gone before 5:00 a.m. and she came up and did it every day. the adults all struggled with drugs. whether it was not crack cocaine, but heroin, marijuana am obviously, pcp, lsd, cocaine, in various forms. of drug that you can think

is something that someone in my family at some point struggled with. host: there is a reference in the article about kids in the neighborhood making fun of you in relationship to your aunt who was accused of being a prostitute. what can you tell us about that? that is a factual question. i'm going to dodge it and say it whether what the kid said was in fact true. that is what i believed and my reality at the time, and so, that is prostitution in exchange for crack cocaine. that certainly happened. it always hurts when i hear people say that drug use and drug addiction are victimless crimes. there are victims we don't talk about and we don't know about.

living in that type of environment, even for the kids you make fun of me, and for myself, we were dealing with things we should not have had to deal with. . i did not know what sex was. when i heard this, the first thought i had was "well, what are you talking about and what is it?" and then, you know, that was my first introduction to sex at nine years old. lasting impact for me. ittook many years of therapy for me to get through. it was incredibly difficult without saying anything about what her situation actually was. host: when did you start therapy, and what kind of 30 was it or is it? -- kind of therapy was it or is it? myst: i thought i was taking

husband to their p1 we started to have a number of communication difficulties and and speak to someone for about one hour every week, and we would drive very far. out to virginia. laurel mountain and would talk to someone once a week, and we did that for a couple of years. and as i said, i thought i was going for him. it completely turned around and we spent a lot of time working through some of the things i have not talked about and had not thought about and had not dealt with, and it was meaningful work, and work that i i meet peoplen who have had similar experiences to mine. it is the first thing i say is "you should go and sit down with changed myecause it life. i probably have a lot more work to do, but it definitely put me on the right path. of your friends,

relatives, that you knew when you were young, have come out of that environment and been successful? quite a few, actually. my cousin, who i referenced in the beginning, who lived with theit was her mom who had biggest impact on me and showed me what drug abuse can do and what it can do to your body and how awful it is and why credit with being one of the major forces and pushing the major forces and pushing me out of that and into education and her aughter, my cousin, is now director at the department of the interior. she has been incredibly successful in her career. my friends, i have a group of women that i grew up with that i stay close with. since the article ran, we spent the time talking about what our experiences were again, and all of them are incredibly

successful. one of them is a law professor. one is a teacher in the district. one is a writer. us all very proud of surviving. host: how did you get out of all of this? when did it start that you saw you could someday be a clerk for a supreme court justice? guest: i don't think i ever thought that was possible. that fear that i felt after my father's death, for a long time, that fear and anger over not knowing what happened to him is what pushed me forward, so immediately, at the funeral, it is one of the thoughts i had. all i could think was "i have to get out." i felt very strongly that if i did not get out, i would end up like him, and i did not know how wast i met a lawyer who i blown away that he was someone who looked like me because i did that iw any lawyers

could talk to, that i could touch, who would be more models for me. host: where did you meet him? guest: my father had a lot of life insurance and pension from his time in the army, and i was a beneficiary. because i was underage, it was put into a trust, and a lawyer managed that trust from the time when i was seven until the last time i saw him, maybe 19. host: he's now deadhost:? guest: he is now dead. host: he was an african-american? guest: first of all, the drive -- we office was just went from my neighborhood, which brick, not very totty, and things started change. there were trees and beautiful these, and they were all office buildings, and i am

thinking what do i have to do to get to a place like this? and just being blown away on the drive of what i was seeing. i get to the office, and a man who, his name is on the building, and his name is on his office door, and i walk in, and he is black a lotny: and he said read and become a good writer. that became my roadmap. read? what did you anything. everything at home. i became afraid to sleep at night so i would read until the sun came up. i read the bible.

then i discovered the library. read everything i could get my hands on. focused on how they used language and how they put sentences together. in how powerful books were allowing me to escape to other places and i was reading about andle who were in pain coping with it. sometimes in unhealthy ways and when i am not working, i read. i read two books a week, sometimes more. that is how meaningful reading

became. from reading, i learned to structure my own writing. you read and become a good writer, you become like me. when i talk to my friends to come from southeast or similar places and we talk about how we themehrough, the common is we all wanted something better. we experienced things that made us want to get out. brian: how hard was it to get into georgetown law school? tiffany: for me it was hard. by the time i applied, i thought i was ready. this was a huge commitment financially and in terms of time. along the way, there were points

when i almost went another way. my first two years of university of maryland were difficult. i had always been a great student and i got to maryland and had to take remedial math. i was devastated. i thought, maybe i'm not as smart as i thought i was. class and id a got a d and c. it was the first time i saw a's and b's associated not with me. the fall semester my grades were a,b,c,d,f. i went home that semester with the intent of not coming back.

in my mind i started to think, well, everybody in my family, they are making it. they are doing fine. they did not go to college. this is something i really struggled to do. i came close to giving up and then i remembered why i was doing it in the first place. how very disappointed my father up and how i gave disappointed all the people who pushed me would be. my aunt, how disappointed she would be. wdiscovered student loans and ent back to school and maintained a's for the rest of my time at maryland. when i thought about georgetown, i was terrified that was and it. i would are-- that was an experience i would repeat.

i had to get over that and all the things running through my mind. that was the hardest thing. the application was easy, the relatively.y it was dealing with my fears. brian: lsat law school application. tiffany: yes. brian: what year did you finish georgetown? tiffany: i graduated in 2013. when i left georgetown, i said nothing will be undone when i walk out of here. georgetown was significant to me because my first job was working in the georgetown law school. i looked at the students and thought how blessed they are to

be here. and now i was going to be one of those students i looked up to/ . that pushed me to work like a crazy person. i existed on very little sleep. i went at night, i did not go during the day. it took mefour y -- me four years. my first year i did very well. the top 2 percent of my class. georgetown does not rank students but they will let you know if you're in the top 5%. it was important to me that i never fell out of that. i graduated within to top 5%. i did their journal. i was the editor in chief of their journal and review of criminal procedure. i did a national competition

won national best brief in the regional championship. a competitive fellowship program where you work with the professors to teach first-year students legal research and writing. brian: you maintain a full-time job? tiffany: i did. brian: what was your job during law school? tiffany: the first three years i worked at the united states attorney's office at the district of maryland. ont i was doing is working narcotics conspiracies in baltimore and then i transitioned to greenbelt where i did nothing but ms-13 prosecutions for a long time. i was in charge of all of the evidence. room where werge

kept every piece of evidence from writing to machetes. i was in charge of knowing where that was at all times and discovery, which is the process by which lawyers turn on evidence to the other side to give the knowledge of what will be presented at trial. when i finished my first year, we had two capital trials. ede went to trial and we prepp n for another. the defendant excepted life in general. it was hard work. acceptedhe defendant life in jail. i drafted briefs. that is what i did every week.

goould leave around 4:30 and to class. class with every day, monday through friday. sometimes they went to not :00 at night. i had to study, do my journal work, my court work and it was what life was like. brian: i want to jump. some video of a circuit court judge in this district by the name of david. i want to say is look closely at why --nd you will see he would not mind me saying this -- here is somewhat you clerk for. and earlylate 60's

70's, we thought we would solve this problem. that poor people in the country would have access to the legal system. we thought that goal was obtainable. here we are today, some 40 years later, and you heard the number from jonathan. poor people who need legal services cannot get them. in washington, it is 90 percent. later, and you heard the number from jonathan. 80% of poor people who need legal services cannot get them. brian: tell us what people do not know when they watch david? second: he was the justice for the district clerk judge before him. the person who started me on the

path was just -- the judge. i did not know who he was but i knew this was someone i wanted to work for because what you just saw is something you dedicated -- he dedicated his life to. i clerked on a trial court at first and then i went to him. judge tatel is --if i wanted to pick a lawyer i wanted to model --iareer and life after hope i can have half the talent and integrity he has. he is very meaningful to me. working for him --as someone new loves to write and keeps that as --there is no

better writer than judge david tatel. i worked with him for a year and the way his process works is you write something and then you going to his office and read it outloud including the punctuation. he edits it verbally. him, there'swith nothing i do not write that i do loud, including the punctuation. he changed the way that i write and view the law. that year with him was incredibly special. brian: how does he do it? metro, theon the subway. tiffany: he does travel alone. mind is of work, his incredible.

i was reading something to him and he would say go back up three paragraphs. he can quote what i said verbatim. his mind is absolutely -- it blows my mind. he works with readers who are people who read much faster than i can. if you heard them read, you would not be able to keep up. about two times normal speed. technology allows him to listen to briefs and everything no matter where he is. that is how he does it. brian: you have my permission to tell him we're hoping someday he will tell us all about this. tiffany: i will ask him. brian: how then, after you

clerked for him. you have done district, circuit and then you decided --did someone encourage you to apply for the supreme court? tiffany: i decided not to apply for the supreme court when i started with judge tatel. financially it was difficult. you do not make much as a clerk. brian: what do you make? tiffany: it starts about 65 and can go up to 75. to a lot of people that sounds like a lot of money, but i had a quarter million dollars in student loan debt. companies do not care if you have this great clerkship. they want their payments. i decided that another year on that salary would not be sustainable. i was anxious to start working

and, if i'm totally honest, i was convinced i would not get it and i hate rejection. i had convinced myself i'm not going to get that. judge tatel said, after we work together on our first opinion, he saidh thought i wase ready for that job. he thought i was ready for that job. he asked me if i had my application materials ready and i said no. then talk do that and to me. i applied. i mailed my application materials on january 13, which is the day my father died. i tried to take that day back and turn it into a special day instead of a sad one.

that morning i discovered a typo, which was probably my father looking out for me. i snatched the application back and sent it a few days later. then i heard from justice sotomayor the same week i put my application in. here clerk called me and said te justice would like to have you in for an interview. i asked if he was serious and immediately started crying. i did not think that would happen. i did not think i would get the interview. the interview and i had about two weeks. harder than i prepared for the bar exam. brian: what did you do to prepare? tiffany: i read all of her opinions sinc she is been on -hee on the supreme court -- - been on the supreme court.

well over 40. i'm a part of the interview might be expecting me to talk about what areas of the law are important to me and how i think they are developing. i reviewed those things. the supreme court decisions i must agree with and police agree with. agree with. i put together an outline of 49 oagpages. i did a mock interview with friends and that is how i spent about two weeks getting ready for the interview. brian: how long did she spend with you? tiffany: it was about a 30 minute interview with the clerk and i spent 30 to 45 minutes with the justice. brian: when did she make up her mind? tiffany: april 8 was the day of

my interview and i need the justice did not hire until november or december. she was honest with me, you may not here for a while and it was awful. i did not hear back until june. i became so nervous about it that i would keep my phone on silent and facedown so i would not be watching it. then i hadhe call and to work up the courage to call back. by this time, it was a job i really wanted. i called her back and she offered me the job. it was lifechanging. shen: is justice sotomayor, is on the second district court of appeals, she is talking about clerks at that time. >> i read all the briefs that

come in first. i make a type up summary of the list then use and i questions i have as a result of the briefing. byook at the articles raise the parties of what my reaction is. some questions i know the answer have some experience in certain areas. i tell them do not bother researching that. the law firm will then write a bench memo and that will be an analysis of the case. i seek in a recommendation -- a recommendation from my law clerks as to what the outcome should be. brian: sound familiar? tiffany: absolutely. that is exactly what working with her was like. brian: what is a bench memo?

tiffany: a bench memo is where you read all the briefs followed by the parties/ .sometimes there are nonparties that file briefs, which are people who think they have something to say that might help the court. the record below includes the decisions of the lower court. you write that into a memo and the most important part is when you lay out the party arguments and make a recommendation on how the case should be resolved. on one of the amazi --one of the amazing things about clerking at the court is the volume of the work. there sometimes when he would week and weeka nd -- sometimes it has to be due in 48

hours and you do not sleep and get it done. 5 secondswant to show 2 of an interview we did in our series on the court in one of the offices so people can see the environment. is. stephen breyer -- this stephen breyer's office. >> this is where the clerks are. our messenger and such. they are here for a year. i have four clerks. they are valuable. indeed crucial. brian: your office looks like that? tiffany: a little different. i know that office well. all of us stick together. brian: how can you write, think and read while you're there together? t.ffany: i didn'

i would write when other people were not around. most of my writing got done very early or late at night. it is hard because in some threet is good to have brilliant people who are your colleagues. this clerks of the court, i was impressed with how smart they were. to have people who can talk through any legal issue, in some ways, that makes it easier. brian: if i understood you write, there is one black out of 36 when you were there. why? tiffany: there are so many

answers. that is something the federal courts have really struggled with. on any given year, there are 2.5% african-american clerks in the entire federal judiciary. latinos are worse. 1.2%. at the court it is especially bad. i was the only one. there may be some years when there are only two. that is a good year. pool the justices are looking at is small. if you are a viable candidate, you into a great school and have impressive people speaking up for you. you clerked for a small number of judges who routinely feed clerks to the court. for an african-american or latino to get into that pool, it is --it becomes a real problem.

it hurts because the perspective of diverse law clerks is so important. and every one of my clerkships, there was a case where i felt like i saw something because of my life experience that someone else did not see. brian: in just a couple of minutes we have left, talk to the people who came out of your same environment and tell said,ot with that lawyers read and write, but what would you tell them about getting out of that world and having your nd havingces-- ab the same chances you had? tiffany: to get out, you have to want it more than anything. you have to be willing to keep moving forward at all times abnd you should know that, in the

end, i believe everything you go your benefit. if you keep moving forward in order to get the success that you want, you have to be more creative than other people. you have to look to resources that, when you don't feel like you have any resources, you have to find them somewhere. be a teacher or do not afraid to email people who are doing things you want to do. if you food someone on tv and he was a learned something from them, email them. i was so afraid to ask for help. but do not be. sometimes people will not respond but sometimes they will say yes and it will change yu

-- your life. note that all the struggle comes together for your good. brian: the reason we asked you to come here was this front page article in the post. 28.as september was there anything about that article you did not like? tiffany: no. no. to john toxt message say that. i was so nervous about this article. brian: did you think it would be on the front page? tiffany: i did not. i thought it would be in the local pages buried in the middle. i did not expect. there was nothing. everything i was worried about either wasn't included are was written very delicately. i am really happy with the way

it turned out. the one thing i wish was there, it left out the second half of t my life. obviously because you can only go on for so much time but i want to say that one thing that helped was i always knew there were adults, as imperfect as they were, they left me very much. my mother, second father and siblings always loved and encouraged me. later in life, we became a very normal family. i love them and they have been a major source of positivity. brian: we put your email address on the screen. someone who wants your help and email you. brian: i will respond.

-- tiffany: i will respond. thank you very much for telling us your story. tiffany: happy to be here. ♪ announcer: four free transcripts are to give us your comments about this program, the sad "q q&a.org.isit us at announcer: if you enjoyed this week's "q & a" with tiffany wright, here are some other

programs you might like. angela rye talks about her role as the professional counsel for the congressional like congress. arkas talks about the series "the capital." c-span's washington journal, live every day with news, policy issues that it had you. coming up monday morning, a conversation about the major issues facing congress and the white house with lisa of the l.a. times and bloomberg's shannon pettypiece. and how much is the molar investigation costing -- mueller investigation costing taxpayers? announcer: next, british prime minister theresa may takes

questions from members of the house of commons. then a roundtable discussion on political news of the week in a preview of tuesday's alabama senate election. and at 11:00, another chance to see "q & a" with tiffany wright. during question time on wednesday, prime minister theresa may took questions about president trump's decision to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital as >> order, questions from the prime minister. >> question number one. >> the prime minister. i am sure the whole house will wish to join me in offering