Trinity Lutheran

A few years after the dog attack, we moved from Mansfield to Toledo, Ohio. I was in second grade.

That year was hard in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. I attended a public Montessori school that felt very different from anything I had known. It was also a school that specialized in disabilities. There were children in my class with special needs, and their behaviors often scared and confused me.

I didn’t know how to process what I was feeling.

Looking back now, I understand that I was taking everything in. I’ve always been someone who feels deeply—someone who senses what is happening around me without words. But as a child, I didn’t yet know how to separate what was mine from what belonged to others.

I only knew that I didn’t feel like I fit and had a lingering sense of being alone in it. I became quiet. I turned inward at school. I don’t remember forming close friendships at school that year, all my neighborhood friends went to private schools.

The following year, my parents made a different choice. They sent us to a private Lutheran school—Trinity Lutheran School—where I stayed from third through eighth grade.

And something shifted.

It was a smaller environment. More structured. More predictable. And within that, I felt something I hadn’t realized I was missing—

I felt safe.

I was accepted. No one made me feel different because of my scar. Even after surgery before eighth grade, when I returned with bandages on my face, I still felt like I belonged.

And in that space, I began to come back to myself.

I became involved. I took on leadership roles. I played basketball and found confidence in my body again. I was chosen to cheer with the older girls—the only one from my grade—and by eighth grade, I was captain.

On the outside, I was doing really well.

But inside, there was still something else.

A quiet layer of worry that never fully went away.

It would show up when my breathing felt tight or when my body didn’t feel strong. Subtle, but steady.

At the same time, I was being shaped by religion.

Trinity gave me structure, community, and a belief in something greater. It helped calm parts of me that felt uncertain. It gave me answers when I didn’t have any.

But it also gave me beliefs that I carried deeply.

I learned about heaven and hell. About sin. About being saved through Jesus Christ.

And I believed it.

Completely.

My family used to call me “the little nun.” I corrected my brothers when they swore. I talked about Jesus often. They teased me, but underneath that, I felt a real sense of responsibility.

Because what I had been taught was clear: once you know, you can’t unknow it. And once you know, it becomes yours to carry—and to share.

Because if people don’t believe… they go to hell.

That belief stayed with me.

And with it came fear.

Fear of being wrong.
Fear of not being good enough.
Fear of what happens after we die.

I didn’t just carry that fear for myself.

I carried it for the people I loved.

Especially my mom.

She was everything to me. My safe place. The person I felt the most connected to.

And even as a child, I was afraid of losing her.

I remember lying in bed at night, thinking—

What if she dies?
What if I forget what her voice sounds like?

I was so young to be holding thoughts like that.

There was nothing wrong with her. She was healthy. But there was more quiet back then—more space. And in that space, my mind would drift to fear.

Religion helped me hold that.

And for that, I’m grateful.

It gave me comfort. It gave me something to lean on. It gave me a sense that there was a plan, even when I didn’t understand it.

I found safety, belonging, and something to believe in there—but I also began to carry a fear I wouldn’t understand until much later.

Over time—especially after my mom’s death—I began to gently question and unravel parts of what I had been taught.

Not because it was wrong.

But because I needed to understand it in a deeper, more personal way.

I still believe in something greater.

But it no longer looks the same.

It couldn’t.

Because losing her at 42 changed everything.

And that is where the story begins to shift.