Cook: The sisters who struggle for Kelly Gissendaner

Kara Stephens was losing her mind when she found her heart.

It was 2008. She was serving 10 years in a Georgia prison for robbery. She’d gotten in a fight, so guards moved her to a solitary cell in a place she calls “lockdown” — the segregated part of the jail where they house the mentally ill, the suicidal and the death-row murderers.

For two months, Stephens, who now lives in Chattanooga, sat in solitary confinement.

“It makes you lose your mind,” she said.