That may sound like an easy question, but seriously I am literally a whole lot of crazy. Not many people have known the real me, that includes my parents. The only one that I can say that really knows me is my husband and slightly my daughter, because I never hide things from these two. They are the ones that I can trust aside from those families I have chosen as my circle of TRUST! I am in my 40’s now, but like I said not many know how I grew up and how I became the person that I AM! So let me introduce myself and say, my name is Alicia Castano and I was born Alicia Nelson in Rehoboth, New Mexico. At the original hospital that is someone’s house today. I was then raised in Gallup for the first 5 years of my life and then we moved around from East to North of Gallup. When I was 5 I started school at Gallup Catholic School, so can you say token Navajo? Yes, that is what I was.

My parents were both working at Gallup Indian Medical Center, so technically I grew up in the hospital. So when school was let out at 3 PM my dad would come to pick me up and then we would go back to the hospital so he could work an hour and a half more until 4: 30 PM. That meant that for a little over an hour waiting for my dad to finish work, while I did homework or tried to stay sane while waiting in a truck by myself, getting hungry now and then, but able to cross the street back and forth by myself at the age of 5. Walking down to the ground floor where there used to be a snack bar. I literally played around the hospital grounds like it was my playground and I even had a friend that I saw all the time, until we got older and her mom worked there too. Her name was Roselynn, but if she wasn’t there I would find other ways to entertain  myself. To believe that I spent from the age 5 to about 16 years old I had been waiting at the hospital.

I state 16 because then I was able to drive home, but no matter what I was still at Gallup Catholic High School now. I literally completed all my schooling at one school. Now it would cost an arm and a leg to send your kids there, but my parents wanted me to have the best education which I got, but not without any sort of pain. I mean one of my earliest memories of kindergarten was the fact that I got my wrists slapped with a yardstick a few times. Plus all the beatings I got for the grades I got were bad and the mistakes I made. There is a reason I state that I have been to hell and back is because not many know me, and I think I will write to show you! Overall no matter what I have always been alone, traveling, exceeding, praying and being myself wherever I go, because I learned to survive at an early age and have not stopped being that way! One thing people will know and maybe associate with me is the fact that I have always been INDEPENDENT!