I was twenty years old when a friend invited me to Unity Church in Greenville, South Carolina. For the first time in my life, I heard someone say, “You are God’s beloved child with whom God is well pleased.” I cried all day and all night after hearing that. I decided that day to stop dying, at least in the way I had been mentally treating myself. Someone actually found me lovable:

God loved me. I knew this, but no one had ever said it to me. I had lived my whole life trying to prove that God did not make a mistake when I was created, and I would live long enough to understand that there is a big difference between making a mistake and being one. When all the people who surround you have an outdated, constricted version of God, you start to deny your natural intuition after a while.

I am so grateful to Don Bliss for thinking enough of me to introduce me to a place that practiced a true connection to God. This was the start of true bliss for me and was a key factor in my being found. Knowing that I was God’s beloved with whom God was well pleased stopped the cycle I was living every day of wanting to die rather than live. I know had I not found this way of living, I would not have found a way to live.

Twenty years of waiting to be validated and recognized is a very long time.