I can’t believe this just happened, I thought. I remember crying and shaking after it did. I was walking through downtown Portland, Oregon—a place I used to call home. Just a few weeks earlier, I had walked those same streets with a coworker, who was showing me some of the heritage trees in the area. We had passed through the southwest pedestrian trail and arrived at a copper beech tree planted in the 1800s, standing gracefully before the Portland State University library.

I was sitting on the theater platform, the light shining on my face so brightly I could barely make out the faces in the crowd. My chest felt tight, my cheeks hot, and I could feel my body holding still, almost as if it was frozen. I didn’t know where to look. I remember wanting, for a second, simply to disappear. Everyone was waiting for my reaction. But all I could think of at that moment was a phrase featured in a popular magazine in South America in the 90s called Tu (Y

As I sat on the steps of a traditional Balinese home (Rumah Gapura Candi Bentar), questions about my religious upbringing began to resurface. For the first time, I felt like I was able to make sense of experiences that had lived quietly inside me for years. Early on in my life, most of my family did not have a particular religious affiliation. I heard stories—often told with judgment or ridicule—about my grandmother practicing what others called "witchcraft," though it was