This isn’t a feel-good tribute to a sainted mother. If that’s what you’re expecting, I invite you to stop reading here, bless your heart, and go back to your social media of choice where your friends are posting angelic photos of their mothers with captions like “My forever best friend.”
This is for the rest of us.
Read MoreI was 14 years old when my mother found solace in faith. A single weekend retreat with Campus Crusade for Christ transformed her from a woman drowning in sorrow and anger to one immersed in a newfound faith. Our lives changed overnight. Prayer groups and church became our center, and our world shrank into a religious framework that, while comforting for her, increasingly became confining to me. Until then, daily religious practices were not part of our lives. Our family attended Catholic mass on special occasions, we attended Catholic schools because all of the bilingual private schools in Colombia at the time were Catholic, and I had my first communion at 11 years old like everyone else in my school, but we were not religious people.
Read MoreWhen I look back at my childhood years, two main emotions always surface for me: joy and fear. I have beautiful, joyful memories of playing with my friends from the block in the neighborhood where we lived in Bogotá.
Read MoreOn an unusually sunny day in 1992 in Bogotá, Colombia, a city in the Andes Mountains where rain is more common than sunshine, I asked a question that triggered the beginning of the end of the life I was living. That morning, the sky was blue, and the temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit—rare conditions in my birth city.
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