MY FLORIDA It's not a fictitious place promising a Fountain of Youth. It's not all about Disney, nor is it all news of the weird. It's much more complicated than that. This is a love-hate relationship. This is a visceral, visual reaction to the place I call home. This is my Florida.

MOTEL FAMILIES After they've lost their homes to foreclosure, after they’re evicted, after they’ve exhausted all friends' couches, they come here to live. To the Mosley Motel and places like it. The Mosley has dozens of families with kids currently living there. There are even bus stops behind the motel where they get picked up for school. Many of these families live here for weeks, months and years at a time -- trying to make a safe place to live out of a difficult environment. Prostitutes meet johns in the motel next door and drug deals go down on the street the motel faces. But the Mosley is filling a gap for struggling families, and it provides a financial respite for those without the means to live elsewhere.

THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW The veteran police detective who found Danielle said he'd never seen a worse case of abuse. Her emaciated, dirty frame was covered in insect bites. At 7, she was still wearing a diaper, one that was soaked and swollen, leaking from the legs, obviously not changed for days. She was unable to speak and could only communicate in grunts. Isolated and neglected, she was a feral child. In January 2008, writer Lane DeGregory and photographer Melissa Lyttle learned about Danielle's story from a source who called to say that after bouncing from foster families to nursing homes, the little girl had found a "forever family." For the next six months, DeGregory and Lyttle documented Danielle as she was taught how to feed herself, mouth sounds in speech therapy, laugh when tickled -- as she learned how to be loved. While the past was impossible to photograph, talking to doctors who examined her, judges and case workers who fought for her, and even the birth mother who did this to her helped piece together Danielle's history. Their stories helped shape the main question central to Danielle's story: Can love and caring make up for a lifetime of neglect? The story hit the Web on a Friday afternoon. By midnight, so many readers had posted comments that the site shut down. "The Girl in the Window" generated more response than any piece of journalism ever published during the 124-year history of the St. Petersburg Times. The story touched people. It made them angry and hopeful, grateful and more aware. It helped raise awareness about child neglect, foster care and abuse investigations -- and tens of thousands of dollars in unsolicited contributions for Dani's long-term care. Lane DeGregory's story went on to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

THE GOOD SISTER For seven years, life has relentlessly pulled (twins) Hailey and Olivia apart -- milestone by milestone. Hailey walked at 11 months, talked at 15 months, kicked her first soccer ball at 5. At 7, Olivia cannot stand and struggles to hold her head up. She smiles when she's happy, but she cannot say it. For years, Olivia's progress has been measured hour by hour, with each letter "S" her mother scribbles on calendars when she has a seizure. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a scenario in which the trajectory of the sisters' lives simply continues to diverge. But something in Hailey has resisted that. She seems determined not to lose her grip on the being to whom she is closest in the world. Her mom thinks that because of Hailey's efforts, the sisters are closer now than ever. What makes a good sister? Hailey Scheinman doesn't have the answer. She's 7. Hailey Scheinman is the answer. -- written by Rebecca Catalanello | Tampa Bay Times

CHOOSING RILEY Trisomy 18, the doctor said, is "incompatible with life." The baby would likely die before birth. If she did live, odds were a coin toss that she would die in the first weeks and less than 1 in 10 she would live a year. She would not cry or smile, the doctor told them. She would never walk or talk. Typically, women who hear a doctor say their child will be a "vegetable" choose to end their pregnancies, or as an online support group calls it, "say early goodbyes." Addie's boyfriend, Ryan Allen, told her it was her choice. He would stand behind her. So Addie chose. She chose to ignore the doctor and the grim statistics. And she chose a name. Riley. -- written by Elisabeth Parker | Tampa Bay Times

TO BE A MOM Lillie Southerland has been in foster care "like forever," she says. At 14, and pregnant, the odds are against her being adopted. When she went to get her last sonogram, three days before the baby was born, Lillie was shaking. "If you're this scared, Honey, maybe you should get your mom to come in her with you," the sonogram technician told her. "I don't have a mom," Lillie replied. "Will you be my mom?" The sonogram tech, Amy Chandler, 37, already had five kids of her own, aged 1 to 11. But something drew her to Lillie. She opened her arms and home to the girl who badly needed a fresh start. Amy wanted nothing more than to teach a little girl who never had a mom how to be a mom.

PAKISTAN'S UNWANTED CHILDREN In 2011, read a small blurb on cnn.com about the rise of infanticide in Pakistan. Equal parts horrified and fascinated, I kept it in the back of my mind as something to look into while traveling there. Seems the number of unwanted kids keeps going up as Pakistani youth are seeking out love marriages, and resorting to dating and normal teenage relationships like their western counterparts (abortions and birth control are a no-no, as are having kids out of wedlock). Other contributing factors are believed to be a mass move from rural to urban areas (and not needing a dozen kids to work the land anymore, instead just worrying about having a dozen mouths to feed), and increased poverty (even having one extra mouth to feed is getting tough). It led to this, the final story writer Susan Taylor Martin and I worked on during our trip, about the Edhi Foundation and the amazing work it's doing. As a private organization, they are providing all of the social services the government of Pakistan should be providing -- but isn’t. Edhi is simultaneously running the morgue, preparing babies found in the dump for a proper Muslim burial, providing the vehicles and manpower for the the ambulance service, putting out cradles for women to drop their unwanted babies in (much like a safe house or fire house here in the states), providing orphanages and mental institutions and on and on…

Daily life in Gaza