My mother was atheist. She deconverted, she says, when she was about 6 years old. I was raised with catholic teachings by my grandmother because my mother had to leave the small city and go to the bigger city to support us. In any case, all I remember was my grandmother's beatitud and her unshakeable catholicism. As for me, I never really believed anything because I was little when she would take me to church. All I remember is getting really, really bored during mass and wanting it to be over so we could go home. My grandmother used to tell me the story of how my grandfather, whenever he would get drunk, would curse god and yell that he didn't exist as my poor grandmother would shake in fear that god's almighty hand would punish my grandfather for his beliefs or lack of them. For me, it was all amusing stories. As I grew up, and my mom moved back with us, all I listened from her was that god did not exist, that catholicism was just another religion, like many others that exist in the world, that it has played quite a destructive role in the world and has committed many "sins" against humanity (so to speak) and that the bible had been written by men not by god, that it was a quite inaccurate historical document, that Jesus Christ had been a political figure of his time and that that is why he had been killed, and that there was not such thing as God. She had quite a confrontational/LOL attitude towards any religious sects that would contact us and once they were gone she would always make fun of them in front of us. Given these sets of circumstances, it became very hard for me to believe that there was a GOD, no matter how much other people tried to influenced me as I became a teen and then an adult. I made many of my friends cry over my beliefs (they were believers). Many said they were sad for me.

As I started growing more separate from my mother's influence, I became more aware of my beliefs as being mine and not only something I had learned from her. I attended church here and there, mainly to fulfill my social and emotional needs. I NEVER really believed what they were saying and I never made them believe that I was believing them. I even got baptized in a christian fundamentalist church so I could express my opinion and it were taken into consideration because they told me, "since you have not accepted Christ, your opinion does not count." I wanted to belong, so I got baptized. It was peer pressure and I felt I had nothing to lose. But I never believed them. I always questioned the lack of women's decision-making and leadership in the religious institution and never took them very seriously. Quite the opposite. The more I saw how hypocritical they were towards what they said they believed and how they lived their lives, the more resistant I became to religion. If I had been taught not to believe in God, at least I had learned on my own not to believe in the church.

I became quite convinced, and truly believed and still belive, that most of those people who call themselves "believers," were nothing more than hypocrites. As I continued growing, I became to know more diverse types of peoples. I am not as strong-minded in my point of view that "ALL" believers are hypocrites, since I have met a few who really believe what they say they believe(their behavior proves it --they are good people towards others.) But I do believe that, for the most part... they are. I had some chance to take quite a long chunk of time and did quite a lot of reading. I read Bertrand Russell... and many, many others. I also had the opportunity to read a Christian guy whose writings were quite inspirational to me as a person, even if our fundamental beliefs were quite the opposite. I had what many called a "revelation" in the Christian or religious area and felt, and concluded, that if there was such a thing as a god, it was me. Seriously. That that powerful presence, almighty and all-powerful entity religions claim exists was nothing more than the enormous capacity for love that we

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