Cristela Alonso

But they decided ultimately, the United States was a better opportunity for their children.

And, you know, when my mom left my dad, because she was such a Catholic woman,

She told my dad that his punishment for being such a terrible person is to have no contact with his children ever again, and he was never going to be allowed to ever meet me.

And I never met my father my entire life.

There were times where he tried to reach out, and my mom never let him because she didn't want me sullied by having known him.

Yes, and I think that's something that I really try to make a point in talking about a lot on stage as well, is that in my experience, the immigrants that I grew up with and knew were so brave, and they never understood that they were brave.

They never gave themselves credit for doing everything that they did.

And with my mom, she was such a religious woman.

She just loved Catholicism so much.

But the way that she had accepted religion, the way that she accepted Catholicism and taught us to do it, to believe in it, was to have faith that everyone was worthy of being a person that had respect and was treated well.

When I was a kid, our neighbor was, we had a gay neighbor that lived right next to us and another neighbor that was gay that lived catty corner to us.

And she always made it abundantly clear that we were always supposed to treat everybody.

The lesson was, if you're gay, it doesn't matter.

You're a person.

You deserve to be loved and supported.

And it was from the Catholicism perspective.

And it's interesting to me because the way that we talk about religion right now in this country is, it's not the way that I learned it.

It's about hope, love, and compassion.

And that's what she taught me, and it was part of her strength.

In a weird way, she was very liberal, but she had no idea she was liberal, right?