Hello there, dreamers and deep thinkers,
One day, during an ordinary conversation, my mother caught me completely off guard. “I know you don’t believe in God,” she said, her voice steady but tinged with a quiet sadness. The words stung—not because I didn’t believe in God, but because she thought I didn’t.
“I do believe in God,” I assured her, confused and slightly hurt. Her statement felt like a misjudgment of something deeply personal to me, and I couldn’t fathom where she had gotten the idea. It was a moment that lingered with me for years, not because of its finality, but because it revealed the gap between how she saw my faith and how I experienced it.
As time went on, I began to understand the source of the disconnect. My mother, raised in the rich traditions of Catholicism, had a way of thinking about God that was grounded in the “Fatherly” image—a protector, a ruler, a guide who watched over us from above. Her belief system was steeped in rituals, sacraments, and a kind of moral certainty that came from her upbringing. Even though she didn’t regularly attend Mass, Catholicism was deeply rooted in her, shaping how she saw God and, perhaps, how she thought others should as well.
I, on the other hand, approached God from a different angle. My relationship with the divine has always been more abstract—more spiritual, more scientific, even. To me, God is the intricate web of interconnectedness that binds the universe together. God is the spark in quantum energy, the resonance in the stars, and the intangible force that gives life meaning. It’s not that I rejected her vision of God; I just saw something broader, more amorphous, and perhaps less personal.
Whenever I tried to explain this perspective, my mother would gently shut it down. “That’s great,” she’d say, her tone polite but final, “but I don’t want to hear about it.” It wasn’t a dismissal so much as a boundary—a firm line she drew to protect the faith that anchored her. She didn’t want her beliefs questioned, even inadvertently. They weren’t up for debate or reinterpretation; they were her own, private and sacred.
At first, I felt frustrated by this response. Wasn’t faith meant to evolve? To be questioned, stretched, and reimagined? But as I’ve grown, I’ve come to respect her stance more deeply. Her faith didn’t need to be challenged or reshaped by my musings. It simply needed to be. It was hers, a constant in a world that often feels anything but.
Looking back, I see her words not as an accusation but as an invitation—an invitation to understand her worldview, her faith, and the ways they differed from mine. She taught me that faith doesn’t have to look the same for everyone. It doesn’t have to conform to someone else’s idea of what is “right” or “true.” It just has to feel true to you.
In her quiet way, my mother gave me a gift: the freedom to define God for myself, even if it didn’t align with her beliefs. And perhaps, in return, I gave her the space to hold onto the God she knew and loved. We never fully resolved the divide between our views of faith, but maybe we didn’t need to. In our own ways, we were both believers, searching for connection with the divine in ways that resonated with our souls.
Now, when I look back, I don’t feel the sting of misunderstanding anymore. Instead, I feel gratitude. Gratitude for her faith, gratitude for mine, and gratitude for the realization that belief, like love, can take many forms. And no matter how different those forms may be, they can coexist, side by side, like two branches of the same tree reaching toward the light.
Stay curious friends,
April
Cognitive Psycho
