Growing up in America, I had a relatively normal childhood. I was the oldest child, born into a loving Christian family, and we lived out in the country in western Colorado. Everything was peaceful and perfect until I was six years old. At that time, my mom was pregnant with her fourth child, and there was a problem with the pregnancy. The doctors said my brother would be born with Vacterl, a rare condition involving multiple complications. He had a hole in his heart, was missing his right thumb and ulna, his esophagus was disconnected from his stomach, he had dumping syndrome (a metabolic disorder similar to diabetes), and he suffered frequent seizures. He was born eight days after my sixth birthday, and from that day on, my life changed completely. Because he was so high-risk, he spent his entire first year in the childrenβs hospital undergoing multiple surgeries. He was a warrior baby and the happiest little boy you could ever meet. My mom stayed with him at the hospital for the whole year, while my dad worked 80-hour weeks in the mines to pay off medical bills. My younger siblings and I were passed around between family members to live with. For a six-year-old, that caused a lot of emotional instability. I taught myself that I was the only person I could rely on because that critical bonding time with my parents was disrupted. Things got somewhat back on track after my brother came home, but he still needed to be fed through a G-tube morning and night and had frequent medical checkups. Even though we were together again as a family, there wasnβt much space for emotional recovery or connection. I was raised evangelical Christian, and around the age of nine, my parents began exploring Messianic Judaism. When I was eleven, we left our church and joined a home fellowship. That was when my world really started to fall apart. My dad had to leave his mining and mechanic job and moved into farming (unsafe working conditions in the mines), which only paid $2,000 a month. My mom had another child by then, whom I was largely responsible for caring for since she was so preoccupied with my special-needs brother. So now we were a family of seven, with one special-needs child and barely enough income to survive.