For a long time, any means of bettering my life remained a mystery. I had no clue how to embrace a life free of regrets and full of hope. 

This was before I was introduced to Christian Science as an adult and so many possibilities I could not have imagined had opened up for me. My parents had no formal education and relied on manual-labor jobs to provide for their family of ten children. They could not afford to raise all of us, so when I was seven years old (I am the firstborn), they sent me away to live with a relative. My parents thought this was the best way to give me a meaningful life. At the time, my health was not good; I had anemia, for which I had received a blood transfusion. 

Growing up in this other home was one of the most difficult periods in my life. Among the jobs I had were illicit liquor brewing (for which I was arrested when only a child), grazing the family’s three cows, and tilling soil at farms. I was verbally and physically abused at home and was often told that my parents were useless because they could not raise me.