“I grew up Catholic, we would come to church and pray to the La Virgin de Guadalupe a lot and over time I started learning that La Virgin can be a separate entity. To be part of the church as they are now was just sort of a survival tactic. Later, I realized you don’t have to be in the church to praise her, I started to pray to them at the Rio Grande, at my altar or wherever I could find her. It helped me get into touch with mother earth. For me this is a reclamation for my connection to La Virgin or in other words her Indigenous roots Tonantzin. I now have a space to be able to figure stuff out for myself instead of having to be connected through a church where I am made to feel bad. When you remove yourself from the church for reasons, I think a lot of the time what happens to people is that you also remove yourself from spirituality entirely. I think finding that you can still practice your spirituality is a process but important. I don’t think everything is just all like black and white, there’s more to everything. It’s not just what you see, there’s bigger things in that.”- Bianca (She/Her)