Being a child is like being a blank slate. Your parents are the first people entrusted with the chalk. They can draw love, nurturing, a love for fairy tales, etc. My parents drew all of that for me. They also drew God, the Devil, Ecuadorian ghost stories, and Sesame Street.
Most memorable feeling from my childhood: FEAR (and some love too)
My house was quite multicultural. My mother immigrated to the Bronx from Ecuador when she was sixteen. My father was born and raised Jewish in Brooklyn. We now resided in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
My father's Judaism was based primarily on tradition, and had little spirituality involved. We would all fast and avoid electricity for Yom Kippur, only to find my dad huddled next to a small t.v. with milk and cookies in the basement.
My mother comes from a long line of very spiritual people. Her grandmother was a medicine woman in Ecuador and I grew up with countless stories of holy visions and strange encounters with Satan himself. I didn't have to look very far for a boogie man. When I begged my parents to help squash my nightmares, which was ruining everyone's sleep, my mother insisted the culprit was the Devil himself, or El Diablo she would call him. There was only one solution. CHURCH!
Most memorable feeling from my childhood: FEAR (and some love too)
My house was quite multicultural. My mother immigrated to the Bronx from Ecuador when she was sixteen. My father was born and raised Jewish in Brooklyn. We now resided in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
My father's Judaism was based primarily on tradition, and had little spirituality involved. We would all fast and avoid electricity for Yom Kippur, only to find my dad huddled next to a small t.v. with milk and cookies in the basement.
My mother comes from a long line of very spiritual people. Her grandmother was a medicine woman in Ecuador and I grew up with countless stories of holy visions and strange encounters with Satan himself. I didn't have to look very far for a boogie man. When I begged my parents to help squash my nightmares, which was ruining everyone's sleep, my mother insisted the culprit was the Devil himself, or El Diablo she would call him. There was only one solution. CHURCH!
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