- Major funding for the series "I am more than" was provided by caring for Denver Foundation, additional support for this program was provided by the Colorado Health Foundation and Demi Fund.

- My name is Prince Aston Sykes.

I am more than a piece of paper.

My whole life I've been viewed as a piece of paper because I've been in the foster care system.

Every time I would go to court, they would always see me on a piece of paper.

See the things that I've done when it would be time to evaluate my next home that I'm going to go to, they would look at a piece of paper.

I'm more than a piece of paper because I have a gift inside me that other people see that has value and they can see that there's somebody greater living inside me.

Who I am on this earth is a living sacrifice, that's for other people.

I can't stand to see other people who have been in the same position that I have been in and me sitting back and being quiet and not doing the work that takes to get them out of the same situation that I was in.

My name is Prinjaslin Sykes, being a no spoken word poet.

I've been doing that since I was 14 years old, so I've been impacting struggling youth with my testimony and story.

I would say the most impactful part is getting off the stage and having people come to me and say like thank you for that, that completely like, changed my life and that changed my vision on things.

I just left to see people impacted and that puts me out of bed every morning.

My family and friends would describe me as, ambitious, very loving, self sacrificial.

He likes to talk about Jesus too much.

So I mean, I guess the cats out of the bag on when it comes to that one.

Looking back at my life as a journey to me, it's honestly been like a movie.

I've been places that I never thought I would go.

I've performed and done things that I never thought I could do before, and I would say #1 it's because of the Lord's grace and #2, tt's because the community of people that he put around me to help lift me up, and to guide me.

My mom was raped when she had me.

But still to this day I can't figure out why she had me and done.

I would want to follow in my father's footsteps, but he's never wiped these tears's.

I would want to follow in my father's footsteps.

But I haven't seen him in my whole 30 years.

Maybe he was some black man walking down the street.

Or maybe he was some black man in a YouTube video looking for me.

Maybe he was P Diddy.

Or maybe Obama.

But I'll never freaking know because I look like my momma.

My mom, she actually, when we were growing up, encouraged me and my little brother because we were struggling with money and things like that.

She encouraged me and my little brother to go out on the streets and sell her poetry because she was-- She's a poet as well.

So me and my little brother, we would print off these copies and go into businesses or knock on doors and neighborhoods and say, you know, I can perform this poem, for $10.00, for you or I can, you know, sell it to you for $5.00.

So that's kind of how we would make money to put food on the table.

Every month my mom gets a welfare check.

Every time she checks the mail, the bills are up to her neck.

Positives were meeting new people and honestly, it bring me joy to perform my mother's poetry, I would say, and people would say, you know, they're so impressed, it may have been my mom's word, but it was my flow, you know what I'm saying?

So from that point on it all went down.

We went from being stapled to our hollow brown, so I started writing, publishing and then I was good.

So I thought I'd follow in my mom's footsteps and one day get us out of this hood.

It was very powerful.

But yet scary at the same time.

Being a young person, not knowing exactly where you're going to go in life, or if you're going to have the means to even survive the next day.

So we actually ended up staying in a motel and that's when I ended up in the foster care system.

My mom at the time, she was suicidal with me and my little brother, we went and we were swimming in a pool and came back.

And my mom she, was gone.

It was hard because we really didn't know whether she was going to commit suicide or not because we were at, I would say our lowest point in life.

So we actually called our sister and she dialed 911 and the cops showed up.

My mind actually came back, started making herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and at that point in my heart, I felt really bad because I'm like I have no clue what's going to happen and they came in and I don't know if they found her as a threat or not, but she was holding a butter knife in her hand and she was making her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they put her in handcuffs and they took her away.

They took us to our sister's house at first and then after that they took us into the family crisis center where they gave us an option to stay or to go back into the situation we were in.

My little brother also had an option to stay in the foster care system.

He chose to go home with my mother and he's still struggling today with a lot of things.

But they told me, you can take the opportunity to stay here and one of the therapists there told me, sometimes in life you have to think about yourself and you have to be greedy.

And at the time, I was suicidal.

So I was just kind of looking for answers to things and the first thing they did when I went into the foster care system was put me on a bunch of medication.

I was on 500 milligrams of Seroquel twice a day, and they told me, if I see somebody and talk to somebody, everything will be OK.

But I couldn't remember half the conversations I would have with anybody because I was a zombie mort of the time.

The one thing that I wish people did tell me when I was in foster care, was that there was a loving God who did care for me when people didn't care for me.

Because when you're in the foster care system, you know that people are getting paid to do what they do.

They're getting paid to tell you where to go.

They're getting paid to give you your medication and talk to you.

Nobody there is sitting there and they're actually like caring for you.

Having that type of faith and having that type of love and that patience was definitely something that I wish somebody would have told me that was available to me, but it wasn't available.

I sat down and talked to a counselor at my school.

Because someone once told me that my life was the number one rule, constantly thinking about taking myself out of this world.

I was in a place called the Family Crisis Center, and I was there because I wasn't right with myself.

I actually wanted to commit suicide.

And there's this beautiful organization called Art from Ashes.

And they're a nonprofit organization that empower struggling youth by providing creative workshops that facilitate health and hope through expression, connection and transformation, through spoken word poetry.

And they came into the family Crisis Center, and they taught me that I don't have to speak the language of victimization anymore I can become whoever I want and do whatever I want in this world.

So since then then I got in front of like my other peers and the people that were in the same room going through the same struggles started performing my poetry.

From there, they started inviting me to perform at private events and things like that to start raising money for nonprofit organizations in my own community, and they started inviting me to perform on different stages.

I started going overseas to Nicaragua and Prague Europe to perform and from there I started making other connections in our community and they started inviting me to perform with things like that.

Being able to perform on stages and talk to people just about my life and realize like how much impact my life has had on other people, that has been something that I can't explain.

And then the way I see my life going right now is that, you know I'll die, I'll die and I'll be remembered more than I was when I was living.

When I aged out of the foster care system, I didn't have any resources.

I was sitting out on the street, homeless, I was couch surfing.

I was asking friends to sleep on their couches.

I got my first job at Noodles and Company that wasn't able to sustain anything.

I actually ended up going to Mile High United Way and just looking for like some food resources and things and there is a program called the bridging the GAP program.

They basically give you a voucher to help you get on your feet for a year and a half.

So they pay like the majority of your rent and then like you can sustain yourself and like get on your feet.

So that's what I did with them and then started doing a lot of advocacy work with Mile High United Way, bridging the GAP program.

So I got into my first place, and I was just looking for company.

And my cousin actually ended up moving in with me.

And I met my wife through him.

Yeah, we've been married for like ten and a half-- We've known each other for ten and a half years.

We originally got a divorce, but then God reconciled our marriage and we're back together now.

- You have 4 kids.

- 4 kids.

People encouraged me to, like, start making music and things like that.

At the time I was making secular music, so it wasn't really music that was good for my soul and I was living what I was rapping at the time.

So I was living in a lot of like lust and I was living-- You know what I was rapping about, taking drugs, LSD, 'shrooms and just looking for another journey and another hide to to get me through.

I went to New York's Americas #1 Hip Hop and R&B showcase.

I definitely believed that I was at the pinnacle of my career.

I was at America's #1 Hip Hop and R&B showcase in New York City.

I'm like here by myself.

I'm doing this walking the streets of New York, bumping Migos.

Two player and like, I was having a good time.

At that time in my life, I was surrounded by a lot of negative people, negative friends.

I was taking a lot of LSD at the time, 'shrooms I was spending mostly all my money on marijuana and me and my friends.

That's kind of just what we did to have fun.

And what was interesting is that the Lord removed me from them and like they all said that they were going to come with me to New York.

You're like, yeah, we're going to save or get there.

We have like 3 months to get there.

Finally got there and nobody saved up money.

So I ended up going by myself.

I was sitting alone on my hotel bedroom, and I actually wanted to commit suicide.

I usually like flip through the channels.

I was flipping through and then there is a program on the Day Star network they were talking about the Sabbath day and from there I was just like glued to the screen and I couldn't like remove my eyes from it.

Since that day, I haven't put my Bible down and I've constantly been seeking the Lord and what he wants me to do, but I definitely wanted to die alone.

I am in a hotel bedroom and I think that's what happens when you don't have community, even in the aspirations and the ventures that you're trying to take in your own life, if you don't have the community, it can bring you to your low.

On my plane trip back, there was a definite response of not ever being surrounded by those people that I was surrounded with again, so when I got back the Lord completely removed those people out of my life and I kind of just started living my life from there and seeing what the Lord wanted me to do.

He started kind of just like winging me off.

And this was me spending that time taking that rest that self-care to just seek the Lord for a minute.

But he started weaning me off of the LSD, which I did have an addiction for.

Started winging me off of the 'shrooms which I did have an addiction for.

I probably tripped three times a week.

But yeah, he started winging me off with those things and, Yeah, it's been a journey and I'm still growing today.

My wife, what was kind of detrimental is that we put our Bibles down and stopped going to church, kind of just started living our life and kind of doing whatever focused on money and trying to just be successful without God in our lives and our marriage didn't work out the first time, but God reconciled our marriage.

He brings us back together.

I chose to make a sacrifice myself in my own heart.

To say that I would never leave my kids.

I would always trying to be involved in some way type or fashion, and I think that breaks the cycle in my life for my dad not being that for me.

Being a dad, it's beautiful every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights.

It gives me purpose to know that I can have kids to take care of and that there's going to be people that are going to love me when I get older and maybe they'll be able to teach what a family is.

So I try to avoid the word like Christian and things like that.

I personally have a relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I think all things are built in relationship in God himself, he says, " He is a God of relationship."

So just building that connection with him and avoiding everything else like the systems in this world and I would say one of those systems is the Christian Church.

Heart to heart connections are the main thing that can change anything in this world.

When there's deep rooted issues, it begins at the heart.

Each individual, I think taking the time to just love that person and have a heart to heart connection and figure out what the deep rooted issues really are.

Starting with that one person and their one heart and expanding from there.

I think we can we can build from there.

One of the things that is important is not to just share your gift with somebody, but actually show them that you're there to love them versus, sitting there and just like shoving a spoken word poem down their throat or your latest single down their throat.

But letting them realize that I'm here for you, I'm here because you're stuck in a situation that you've been stuck in for a while and that it only takes the next person or your peer to come and tell you that there is a hope and there's future for you, and there's love, and there's patience and there's kindness and people who care.

And if we want to take that step today, we can walk on this journey together and we can achieve certain things together.

It's important to take some self-care because we all need rest.

It's important to take care of yourself, because if you're not healthy yourself, how can you necessarily take care of other people?

Things I use to manage my mental health are a lot of self-care.

Just taking some time to rest and spend some time in the word and most of the time I'm sitting there and something will just come over me and I'll just start writing, and writing, and writing.

Eventually I'll have like a whole song or I'll have a whole poem.

That I can just sit in the mirror and just like, rehearse and go over and over again with.

That's time away from the world, you know, because that's him talking to me.

And that's just our time together.

And I forget everything else, honestly.

So it's therapeutic for me.

Mental health should be #1 when it comes to the music community for sure, especially because a lot of people in the music community are influencers and they influence people who do have open ears to listen to the message that they're carrying, whether that's a negative message or a positive message.

And I feel like when you can take care of your mental health, a lot of those messages that will naturally come out of your heart will be positive.

Everybody thinks they gotta be hard, bro.

So you ain't got to be so hard.

You can have a soft heart.

There's people who need softness these days.

There's people who are tired of being hard.

If you actually open up your eyes and look at the world around you, people are done.

They're done with the hardness.

We need love.

We need kindness.

We need joy.

We need fellowship.

We we need each other.

And we need to stop pretending that we don't.

My younger self, would say, You've been very ambitious, you've dreamed and you haven't let the dream die.

You've traveled internationally.

You've traveled the United States of America.

You have 4 kids.

You're married.

How have you survived when your peers around you are passing away almost day by day?

The one thing I wish people would notice about me today is that it's no longer I who live, if I died, it's Christ who lives inside me now.

A lot of people try to tell me, like, yeah, I hear you talk about Jesus a lot, but what about you?

What about you?

And I'm like, this is me.

This is this is the new me.

This is who I am.

If you want to hear about the old me, I don't think that would be a great proposition for you.

I would say my growth has been trialled by fire.

When you age out of the foster care system, you kind of don't have any other choice but to experience what trial by fire is.

You have to search for the resources that you need.

You have to search for the connection and the families that you need in order to to survive.

And you have to keep moving forward.

You have to get through those hard things and that would definitely be hard to do without faith, without love and a community to support you.

[CHEERING] - I love it.

The idea that I have was up the top right corner was God's brain and his creativity and the gift that he gave me was poetry.

Since the canvas is me, my life is covered in grace.

And red represents the blood of Jesus so well, at least for me, it also represents passion.

So these are only things that, like, made sense in my life.

So those straight lines and same thing with the black, it represents power and all that rocking with power is definitely something that the Lord has given me.

The colors up here on the top right corner, they pretty much like represent like creativity like kind of the mind being everywhere and things like that.

There's a bunch of different gifts that people can like, utilize and access, if they kind of just are patient with themselves and other people, but also wanted to like, bring you down here.

This is kind of like a picture of the mountains having a good foundation as well.

The poetry dripping is pretty much like, we have a gift that's given to us and we never know, like where the words come from, or at least I don't know where the words come from.

When I'm expressing myself.

So I kind of imagine it falling kind of just over my head and then having the anointing to be able to put it on a piece of paper or even on a canvas.

I haven't painted in a very long time, and it's not obviously, not my like forte or thing that I do, but this is definitely something that that helped me out, especially just like right now in my life.

How I felt when I got into the painting.

At first I was super nervous.

I am not a painter or anything like that.

I was surrounded by a bunch of people who probably paint pretty good.

And I'm sitting here like, oh, I have to paint a whole canvas.

It's probably going to look ugly, but that doesn't matter right now because I'm going to access this from my hardship and the things that I'm going through at the moment.

This is mine.

I own this, and even like to correlate with that coming from the foster care system, you were defined as a piece of paper when you would go to court, they would say, like, this is who you are.

And this is what it says you did.

And this is who it says that you hang around with and you'll be sitting there while you're your advocate is speaking for you and your guardian and litem is speaking for you.

But you're sitting there in silence and you're just defined as a piece of paper.

So when I was able to actually, like, get out my emotions on a canvas, it felt like I was kind of like screaming.

Screwed the system, like I'm not just a piece of paper.

Like I can put my colors on a canvas.

I can put my colors anywhere, I can do whatever I want.

So, like, I don't know, I was kind of just like, accessing all those things.

And eventually, like, the nervousness started washing away and just started painting honestly and I wanted to stay and keep painting and I know it was time to go at the moment but...

I feel like sharing that could inspire other people's journey because they could do the same things themselves so they could take that time to have a little bit of self care, and let the world wash away, even if painting isn't something that you know they're good at.

I wasn't good at painting, but I ended up making a canvas and realizing that this is another opportunity to have self-care for myself and to, you know, being empowered that there is a hope and there's a future for me.