People are like stained glass windows.
The true beauty can be seen only when there is light from within. Rites of Passage, originally called AIDS Care and Assistance, is a non-profit agency which was founded in 1988 to provide services for terminally ill people and their families. Rites of Passage was born out of the deaths and losses I experienced in my own life, and I have written this story of how and why it came to be because it is a story that may be helpful to someone else. When I was seven years old, my family moved to Texas from the Midwest, and my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. From then on, for what seemed an endless period of time, my life was made up of one devastating loss after another.