Every now and then, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll have a crazy, painful, amazing life experience. 

I had one of those when I was 16 and my father decided emphatically to seize his life journey.  He declared that he didn’t want to live in South Florida anymore and, with my mother by his side, yanked my sister and I out of our worlds and moved us to his native Santiago, Chile.  Starting over was gut wrenching and difficult, but God, as He often does, works in mysterious ways.

Moving to Santiago was the catalyst for the first of my many re-births.  It shaped me in a fundamental, immutable way. I guess you could say that it did for me what the tiny hole in a cocoon does for a new butterfly, the struggle designed intentionally to equip and strengthen the creature that eventually emerges.

I recently stumbled upon a short story I wrote about this very topic when I was just 19 years old and majoring in Creative Writing at Florida State.  It’s raw and vulnerable and real, and publishing it here scares the crap out of me. So of course, I knew I had to do it.  

It is la-la-la-la-long, so I broke it into three parts.  I hope you enjoy it.  

This, my friends, is the story of how this phoenix was born.