My Story? What Story?

I'm just saying that, for me (and I imagine that might be the case with a lot of people), this turned out to be a much slower and more complicated process I had imagined, especially after listening to so many miracle stories. By the way, I actually have a close friend who is one of those miracle stories: she managed to completely and officially (as in, medically-tested) cure herself from a supposedly incurable and eventually fatal condition through holistic healing and by applying the principles of power of intention, affirmation, visualization, etc. She had gone through all the traditional treatments for years, and kept doing that until they were not needed any longer. However, up until recently, these treatments had just helped her to get by. It was only after she got into the energy healing side of things that her situation really started to change, and kept changing until the condition was completely gone. I'm sure that one of these days she'll write a book about her amazing story of survival, and become one of these gurus who go around teaching people how to do it (and I'm pretty sure I'll be reading her book and attending her workshop...)!

FYI, if you are curious about my religious background: As I was born in Brazil, I was Catholic pretty much by default, but my ritualistic follow-through ended with my baptism. I never went through First Communion, so I never got to confess all my sins and have them pardoned (bummer!). My mother is not fond of religions in general and Catholicism in particular, so she didn't make me. She just agreed to the baptism not to start a war with the rest of the family, and because it's such an ingrained ritual in Brazil, that pretty much everyone does it. When I was around 13, I decided that maybe I should check it out for myself, and I started attending First Communion preparatory classes. I was the biggest and oldest in class (since this is something you usually do when you are 6 or 7 years old).

But I kept going, asking the teacher many questions, and getting as answers those usual (and confusing) dogmas you hear in the movies that poke fun at Catholicism. Until one fine day, when I was told class had been cancelled because the teacher left town quite suddenly (leaving a whole lot of unpaid debt behind). That was it for my attempt at First Communion. As I grew older, I went through a few other mild attempts to understand that religion, and eventually gave up, but not before learning how to live life with the appropriate amount of Catholic guilt. For a while after that, I was described by a friend as a recovering Catholic.