My high school education in South Africa in the mid-1960s was abruptly disrupted when I was told that my school days were over, that I was old enough to work, and that I should now look after my mother and my two younger siblings. I was 17 years of age and had just finished Grade 11. I had been looking forward to completing my final matric year (Grade 12) and graduating from high school when my grandmother and my uncle shared this devastating news with me. 

Without a sound education, I believed, my life in apartheid-era South Africa would be reduced to that of a laborer and a pauper, a scenario I dreaded with all my heart and soul. This situation resulted in emotional trauma, which in turn caused me to suffer from severe migraines. I was advised to seek relief from the migraines in various types of medication, including herbs, “blessed” water, and a tot of brandy—which I did, to no avail. My situation looked bleak and desperate.

When Christian Science found me several years later, I was in a situation similar to the woman in the Bible who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years and had spent all her money on physicians without being healed.