I was adopted as an infant and baptized into the Catholic Church. My parents are active volunteers in the parish and attend regularly. They took me, my sister,

I was adopted as an infant and baptized into the Catholic Church. My parents are active volunteers in the parish and attend regularly. They took me, my sister, and grandmother every Sunday and holy day. At church I learned how much I am loved and valued by God. The priests and the faithful at Mass demonstrated that love to me in many ways. In Catholic school, these lessons were reinforced and again, demonstrated by religious sisters in habits with their strict rules and adorable Irish brogues, as well as celibate priests and deacons who were faculty and staff in my high school. Every one of these Catholic men and women under vows always treated me with utmost respect and upheld my dignity, always and everywhere. When the abuse scandal broke I couldn't quite understand it, but I realized later that I'd been subjected to decades of trauma in my childhood, only at home by family members--women. The abuse I suffered was just as real but it was ignored and denied while people went after the priests and sisters who had loved me and shown so much solicitude for me and my classmates. I'm coming to terms with that now and I'm beginning to explore the root causes of my mental illness--which incidentally became severe when I lived in Silicon Valley and had a high-paying consultant career. Thankfully I returned to my faith in Christ, rather than rejecting Him, and I receive daily reminders of my dignity, my self-worth, and how much we are loved. And that's worth more than any Silicon Valley career.