Happy Saint Mikhael feast, brothers and sisters! Today I want to share the first sketch of the book I began to share on my birthday: Memories of a Prisoner of Democracy. As the Church begins to celebrate the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, I find myself thinking about something extraordinarily simple and extraordinarily profound: if this sketch of so many Memories of a Prisoner of Democracy can be shared today, it is because I am still here to share them thanks to how my guardian angel, Mikhael, has cared for me since I was so young. In the story of my faith, I cannot speak about still being here without speaking about Mikhael, my guardian angel. I owe my life to him. Those words carry particular weight after writing memories that contain so much suffering. These pages tell of experiences that involved profound abuse, fear, coercion, dehumanization, and psychological pain. There were moments when simply continuing to exist became an act of endurance. Yet I am here. I survived long enough to remember. I survived long enough to write. I survived long enough to understand things that, when I was younger, I did not yet have words to explain. I survived long enough to become a teacher, a writer, a creator, and a woman still capable of imagining a different world. I survived long enough to pray. I survived long enough to dream. I survived long enough to love. I survived long enough to tell the story. Yes, in my spiritual growthfulness given by God Love-with-us, Mikhael has been part of that survival. My guardian angel has accompanied me throughout my life, including through years in which I could not see clearly where my story was going. There were dangers I did not recognize until much later. There were moments when I felt terribly alone. Yet when I look backward through the eyes of faith, I do not understand my history as a journey that I traveled entirely alone. Someone was guarding. Someone was accompanying. Someone was pointing toward the Light, since I was a very young child.

Today, on the liturgical celebration of Saint Michael the Archangel, I want to say something that perhaps these memories themselves testify to more powerfully than I ever could: Thank you, Mikhael. Thank you for guarding the little girl I once was. Thank you for accompanying the teen who was trying to understand a world far too complicated for her. Thank you for staying beside the woman who would eventually have to look backward and find words for things that had remained painfully difficult to name. Thank you for every danger from which, in my faith, I believe I was protected—including dangers I may never know existed. Thank you for every moment in which I found enough strength to continue one more day.Thank you for helping me reach a future that, at certain points in my life, I could not yet see. Because there was so much waiting in that future.

There were children I had not yet met. There were classrooms I had not yet entered. There were ideas I had not yet imagined. There were paintings and designs I had not yet envisioned. There were pages I had not yet written. There were dreams I did not yet know how to dream. There were questions about dignity, personhood, fraternity, education, childhood, justice, creativity, and human growth that I had not yet learned how to formulate. There were prayers I had not yet prayed. There was still so much growing left to do. And there still is. That may be one of the most beautiful realizations that comes from surviving: eventually you discover that the future contained gifts that the suffering of the past could not show you. When you are inside a terrible chapter, you cannot necessarily see the children you will someday make laugh. You cannot see the ideas that will someday keep you awake because you are excited to create them. You cannot see the people you will someday love, the beauty you will notice, the work you will accomplish, the questions you will ask, or the person you will continue becoming. You cannot see all the unwritten pages. But God can. Yes, our guardian angels accompany us through pages whose meaning we ourselves cannot yet understand. That is why the timing of sharing these memories that are still being sketched feels especially meaningful to me: these memories contain testimony about terrible things. But the existence of the memories is itself also a testimony to something else: the child grew. The silenced heart found words. The heart who was treated as though her dignity could be conditional continued discovering the inherent dignity that no human being had the authority to give her or take away from her.The life that encountered so much cruelty remained capable of believing in Love.

So, today I do not want to speak only about what I survived. I want to speak about who, in my faith, helped guard me while I survived it. Mikhael, you have known my story from a perspective very different from mine. You were there for chapters I barely understood while I was living them. You were there figting battlers I didn´t knew they existed. You were there when I was a child. You were there when I was afraid. You were there when I was confused. You were there through moments that would only acquire names and meaning years later.You are here now, when those memories are becoming words. That is one of the reasons I feel such profound gratitude during your feast. I can finally begin to look backwards. I can finally write. I can finally say: I made it here. Not untouched. Not without wounds. Not without questions. But alive. Still thinking. Still creating. Still teaching. Still praying. Still loving. Still dreaming. Still growing. Still looking toward God Love. My gratitude to Mikhael is inseparable from my gratitude to God Love. An angel does not replace God; an angel points toward Him. The protection of my guardian angel ultimately leads my gratitude back to the One from whom life itself comes.

My memories are still in process of being written, not all chapters are sketched yet… but there are no untold secrets: what I am sketching are experiences already told in social media, except the last chapter, that I haven´t fully told in social media yet. I mean, these sketches can be constated as I have writen them along the years, and if I could sit down and check in my social media memories details to go deeper, I could write a Bible of memories, but that is not the intention. Each chapter has a main focus that sketches key memories about that focus, sometimes repeating experiences along the chapters to show the connection among them. Basically, what they tell is what human beings can do to another human being… but my life tells another story too. It tells what hatred could not ultimately accomplish. It could not make my life cease to be a gift. It could not erase my capacity for love. It could not eliminate creativity. It could not make dignity cease to exist. It could not prevent every future dream. It could not stop every act of service. It could not silence every prayer. It could not prevent me from arriving at this day and writing these words.

So before continuing to share memories that can sometimes be extraordinarily painful, I want to place this thanksgiving here, a thank-you written from the future that a younger version of me could not yet see: Thank you, God Love, for the gift of my life. Thank you, Mikhael, my guardian angel, for the ways you have watched over that gift throughout my life. Thank you for walking beside me through the chapters I would someday have to write. Thank you for helping me reach the unwritten pages. Thank you for guarding a life in which there were still children to teach, ideas to create, people to love, dreams to dream, prayers to pray, and so much growing still waiting to happen. Today, on your feast, I celebrate you with profound gratitude, because these memories are not being written from a grave Thank you, Mikhael, for helping me make it here.

At the end you can find attached the pdf with the already sketched memories. I have no schedule to end this sketch. I keep writing a little bit everyday. On October 1 I will share the next chunk of sketched memories. Give thanks to all the healing, trust in God and life these three Archangels bring to my life through all these sketches.

Enjoy growing together in communion!