The hot and cold desperation to please my parents, the unrelenting torment at school, the despair that no matter how I tried, I was always one imperfection, one sin, one shortcoming away from crossing through the Pearly Gates. I broke God’s heart time and time again, so my mother said, and He wasn’t the only one. Anguishing waves of disappointment from the way my mother looked at me, the sneers at school, and the disgust in the faces of the church elders—men who’d once rebuked a frightened little girl for seeing unclean spirits in the form of a white fox—made me feel like I was suffocating day
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