How Did I Get Here: The Origin Story

I was born in San Jose, Costa Rica. Both of my parents were born and raised in Haiti but decided to go to medical school there after they got married. Then my sister, and I came along. Growing up, I was mostly raised in West Palm Beach – a predominately white neighborhood in South Florida. This experience was often challenging for me. As an immigrant living in an environment where I was consistently seen as "other," I found that I often had a hard time identifying with a specific cultural group because of the uniqueness of my background. As a result, I made every effort to assimilate despite parental objections. In the end, I learned that I had a passion for learning about world religions and serving others, but I had no idea how to pursue those passions in the form of a career. Despite my leanings elsewhere, I ultimately gave up on trying to find my own career path and pursued the desire of my parents to study medicine at Florida Atlantic University. By my third year in college, after I transferred to Florida International University in Miami, I began to notice that parental motivation was not a sufficient incentive for me to continue pursuing a degree in medicine. As a result, I made the decision to switch my major from biomedical engineering to a double major in psychology and religious studies.

As a Psychology and Religious Studies major, God used my classes to help me make sense of the world. Under my new plan of study, I not only learned about what it meant to be human from an emotional, spiritual, and behavioral standpoint, but I was also able to work through the aspects of understanding my personality, identity, and learning style. Although the identity part came much later, my classes taught me that I was introverted, growth/future-oriented, and devoted to people and causes. They also taught me that helping others would require me to face my own demons. These realizations led me to my own journey with mental health and therapy (I will touch more about this in future posts). Over time, however, the more I delved into my course work, the more I stumbled into another problem. As much as I respected and acknowledged all forms of religious expression, I noticed that traditionally most of them were incredibly passive about the realities of social problems. This way of being was extremely problematic to me. By the time I took classes like “Psychology of Women” and “Feminist Theology and Ethics,” I became very upset and concerned about the way most religious practices addressed issues of gender inequality, domestic violence, and racism. It was particularly troubling in my own faith of Christianity.

For a while, I tried to ignore some of these issues until I was forced to confront them on a personal level as a student leader of one of FIU's campus ministries. In short, one of my closest friends became a victim of spiritual and emotional abuse by someone within our movement. Many of my peers and colleagues showed very little interest in addressing this issue. This level of passivity infuriated me. Motivated by a new desire to learn how to be a better advocate for women's rights, I made the decision to take a hiatus from campus ministry and take steps towards obtaining a graduate degree that could equip me to initiate social change within my community. My exploration eventually led me back to FIU to pursue a master’s degree in Social Work.

Within a few months into the program, I started to feel a pull to a very specific population: the African-American community. George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2013, and I found myself in a place where I was wrestling to find a healthy sense of racial identity. Because of my background, I had assimilated so far into majority culture that I had minimal insight into my relationship with "blackness" and black culture. I struggled to admit this reality to myself until the increase of videotaped, high profile black shootings forced me to realize that I was not only somewhat removed from black culture, but I also had a very misguided understanding about what the people of my community face on a day to day basis (i.e., gentrification, generational poverty, redlining, etc.). Little by little, God turned my uneasiness and sadness into a desire to study more about black history. This desire eventually led me to attend a conference mainly for black believers that redirected my career focus from only working with women to empowering disenfranchised communities as a whole. This decision involved reevaluating my admission to FIU and searching for other schools. After searching for a few days, I found Loyola University Chicago's MSW/MA in Social Justice program. Three years later, I am only a few months away from graduating. (Yippee!)

Today, though I have no idea what future work or ministry will look like, I can honestly say that my experiences have taught me one very valuable thing: With God, faith, ministry, education, and advocacy do not have to be mutually exclusive. This revelation is the catalyst that led to “Soul Sessions with Neph.” Through my experiences, God showed me that I did not have to choose because He was preparing me for something greater. Although, I am still not sure what all that will mean, I am super grateful. God has given me a voice, and I hope to use this blog (and other platforms) to encourage you and others to connect/organize.