Even as a child, I was always curious, always questioning, always searching for something beyond the surface. I suppose that was just part of who I was. One of my earliest memories of this was when I was about five years old, gathering the kids from the neighborhood together. We were out in the sun, and I told them, “If you stare into the sun for a moment and close your eyes, you’ll see symbols.” I explained to them that the symbols were like a secret language, and if they tried to read them, they’d be speaking to themselves—having a conversation with the part of themselves that lived inside. At five, I thought everyone saw things this way, that everyone could connect with the world in this curious, magical sense. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that most people didn’t see things the way I did.
By the time I was seven, I was already pushing boundaries in ways that startled the people around me. I went to a party where most of the guests were teenagers, far older than I was. Bored by the hooking up and couple-dancing that didn’t interest me, I sat down at the kitchen table and asked some of the older kids to draw trees. “I’ll read your personality from the drawing,” I said. At seven years old, I didn’t know the word “divination,” but somehow, that’s exactly what I was doing. I could see things in their drawings that told me about them—things that surprised them, things that they themselves didn’t think anyone else knew. But to me, it was just natural, like a hidden gift I hadn’t questioned.
By the time I was nine, my curiosity had deepened, and I was devouring everything I could about religion. I read the Bible from cover to cover. I wasn’t just reading it to follow along with what I was supposed to know—I was reading it to understand, to question, to make sense of the contradictions. And, of course, the questions came.
One of the most memorable moments of my childhood was when I was nine years old in my Orthodox religion class. We were studying the Bible, and something struck me as odd. I remember reading two different stories about the creation of women. The first story said that God created men and women together, but a few pages later, there was another version—this time, Eve was created after Adam, made from his rib. I raised my hand and asked the priest, who was also our religion teacher, “Why does the Bible say God created man and woman together, and then later it says Eve was created from Adam’s rib? Which one is true?”
The reaction I received was nothing short of shocking. The priest’s face turned red, and in a booming voice, he shouted, “Heresies!” I had no idea what the word even meant, but I knew it wasn’t good. He kicked me out of the class for daring to ask the question. I didn’t understand why my simple curiosity had caused such a reaction. It was the first time I realized that asking certain questions—questions about sacred texts, no less—could get you into trouble. But instead of silencing me, it fueled my determination to keep asking questions, to keep searching for answers, no matter what anyone said.
When I went home and told my parents what had happened, I remember my father asking me, “What do you want to do?” I told him, “I don’t want to be Orthodox anymore.” Without hesitation, my father stood by my decision. He didn’t try to persuade me otherwise. He respected my curiosity and my right to choose my own path. But the school wasn’t so understanding. My form teacher called my parents in a panic, exclaiming that I had renounced my religion. My father’s response was simple and firm: “If she says she’s not Orthodox, then she’s not.”
From then on, I began exploring different religions, devouring books on various faiths. But none of them quite answered the questions I had. I wasn’t just looking for a religion—I was looking for something that could explain the world in a way that made sense to me. I wasn’t interested in blindly following dogma. I wanted to understand the deeper connections that tied everything together. I wanted answers that spoke to both the heart and the mind.
By the time I was thirteen, I had already read the Bible couple of times, studied a simplified version of the Quran, and explored Protestant beliefs, but still, I felt like an outsider. I couldn’t shake the feeling that no single religion held all the answers I was seeking. That’s when I found the Greek-Catholic monastery.
Unlike the Orthodox priest who had kicked me out for my questions, the nuns at the monastery welcomed them. They didn’t shut me down or give me simple, dogmatic answers. Instead, they encouraged me to think for myself. When I asked a question, they would hand me a book or ask me to meditate on it during “quiet time.” There were no lectures, no strict guidelines about what I should believe. The answers, they said, would come if I listened quietly enough. Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t. But that didn’t bother me. I was learning that the search itself was as important as finding the answers.
I spent every Saturday at the monastery, immersing myself in the quiet discipline of study and meditation. The nuns never told me what to think. They trusted me to find my own truth. It was a completely different experience from the rigid teachings I had encountered before. They encouraged me to sit with my questions, to let them simmer without needing immediate answers, to trust the process of seeking itself.
That time at the monastery was life-changing. It was a place where I didn’t have to fit into any particular mold. It was a place where my questions were not only allowed but welcomed. By the time I was fourteen, I made the decision to take my First Holy Communion. It wasn’t out of pressure or expectation. I had spent a full year preparing at the monastery, studying and growing on my own terms. When the day finally came, I knew it wasn’t about conforming to a tradition—it was my own conscious choice, made with full awareness of what it meant to me.
That decision, like every other in my early years, was driven by my need to explore, to question, and to find my own way. It wasn’t about rebellion for the sake of rebellion—it was about following my inner drive to understand the world on my own terms. But that’s just the beginning of the story. The search, the questions, the curiosity—it never really ended. And neither did the journey.
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