Tarana Burke

They would just cover sin for my actual sin, which was really, really, really, really, really bad.

And that the priest would give me like, he would be like, oh, my gosh, you need to do like 50 Hail Marys, do the Apostles Creed 10 times, you know, like, and then I would take those.

I felt like I just needed the priest to give me direction.

And so he would give me the direction for my cover sins.

And then I would go back out into the pews and I would do all this.

The mind of a child is so bizarre.

100% and you're navigating it alone.

So you have just your like 11 year old brain that says, and so I was given all of this information by my priest and again in the church and then I was in the church and in the school.

And so our pastor, Father O'Donnell, would come around every week with the good news.

You know, every Friday we'd get the good news and he'd come around and he'd talk about your sins.

And this is something that what I'm talking about in my new book about grace and mercy.

And I never thought that I would I qualify for God's grace.

Right.

Because it was unmerited.

But I always prayed for God's mercy because God's mercy was.

It's so messed up.

It's just the mental gymnastics.

God's mercy was for those who were bad.

But if you prayed hard enough, God would grant you mercy.

And so every week I would pray for God's mercy.