My Experience With Luisa Fernanda Galvis Mora

Closeness did not mean I felt safe

Growing up, I remember my mother physically hurting me less often and less severely than my father did. But she still hit me throughout my childhood. Describing her only as someone who stood nearby would leave out what I remember her doing herself.

Some of the treatment I remember involved both parents. There were repeated beatings with belts. As I grew older, I tried to protect myself with extra layers of clothing and, sometimes, hardcover schoolbooks inside the front and back of my pants. I remember being made to remove those things, or having them taken from me, before being struck. I describe those attempts to protect myself in more detail in the account of January 4 and the years before it.

I also remember both of my parents forcing me to stand in freezing cold shower water with my clothes on. I would scream for it to stop, and I remember being physically held there. These memories are not all memories of my father with my mother absent from them.

At the time, I did not have the same words for my childhood that I have now. I did not fully recognize what I had experienced as abuse until I was eighteen. For a long time, being closer to one parent existed alongside being frightened of what could happen at home.

Read about my childhood with my father ↗

How I tried to protect myself before January 4 ↗

The night she asked him to stop

On January 4, 2021, a little after 11 p.m., an evening playing video games with friends became the most frightening incident I remember at home. I had been too loud, my father had warned me, and I reacted loudly again while playing. I remember him returning with a power drill and beginning to drill into my PlayStation 4.

I tried to push him away. What followed included being struck, restrained around my throat and necklace at the foot of my bed, thrown to the floor, and held down. I also struck back. I used my forehead against his nose, later swung a fist toward his upper chest or head, and used my forehead again around his jaw while he was on top of me. Those actions are part of my account, and the detailed incident page sets out their sequence.

I do not remember exactly when my mother reached the room or hallway. I remember her screaming and crying for my father to stop. I remember him continuing, and I remember her calling the police. I want to preserve that intervention because it happened within a relationship that also contained harm.

When officers arrived, I remember my father still restraining me with my face or head toward the floor. After he got off me, I was curled on the floor in a severe panic episode, struggling to move normally and catch my breath. I felt that I was being treated as the aggressor rather than as the child who had just been hurt. Police and ambulance personnel took me from the house against my wishes. This led to my first psychiatric hospitalization.

Read the full sequence of January 4, 2021 ↗

Away from home, with a different kind of fear

I identify that first psychiatric hospital as Saint Clare’s Behavioral Health in New Jersey. I remember staying for approximately two weeks. I am not identifying a particular campus or unit here because I have not confirmed those details against records.

During that stay, I encountered discussions and experiences involving suicide, self harm, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other forms of psychiatric distress that I had not previously understood. I was frightened. I felt that being exposed to all of this changed my mental wellbeing for the worse.

At the same time, I felt physically safer being away from home. I could eat more comfortably, socialize, and feel more able to be myself. Those experiences existed together. I was afraid of the psychiatric environment and what I was learning there, while also feeling relief at being somewhere my parents were not physically hurting me.

I remember refusing medication throughout that first stay. I kept saying that there was nothing wrong with me and that the problem was what was happening at home. That was what I believed and said at the time, not a medical assessment I am asking the reader to accept. I repeatedly begged staff not to return me to my parents.

When I was told I had to leave, I cried and begged to stay longer. Even with everything that frightened me about the hospital, returning home frightened me more. I was nevertheless discharged to my parents.

Read about my first admission to Saint Clare’s ↗

What I was trying to protect myself from

When I entered the house, the sight of my father triggered immediate panic. He had not yet said or done anything on that occasion. I ran upstairs, closed and locked my bedroom door, and moved furniture and my bed in front of it.

I put on my skateboard helmet, protective pads, and extra layers of clothes. I put books inside my clothing. Then I huddled on the floor in a corner of the room, crying and panicking. I was preparing for another beating because that was what I feared would happen.

My parents yelled and banged on the door. They called the police and described me as being at risk of killing myself. I was not trying or intending to kill myself. I had only recently encountered the concept of suicide during the hospitalization. What I understood myself to be doing was protecting my body from being hurt again.

I remember moving the furniture and opening the door only once police were outside my room. I allowed them in. I do not remember every subsequent detail, but I remember returning to the same psychiatric hospital within approximately two hours of being discharged.

According to my recollection, child protection services became involved after this second admission. I remember another approximately two weeks in hospital, followed by about a week at my grandparents’ apartment in the same town before returning home around February 4, 2021. These were two admissions with a brief return home between them, not one uninterrupted four week admission.

Read about the return home and second admission ↗

Read about child protection involvement and staying with my grandparents ↗

The physical treatment stopped, but the relationship did not heal

After child protection became involved, my mother did not physically hit me again. I remember the same change in my father’s physical treatment of me. That change matters, but it did not mean that home became emotionally safe for me.

I returned from my grandparents’ apartment to my parents’ home around February 4, 2021. I understood that the case eventually closed without the protection or outcome I had hoped for. I am not describing an official finding here.

I experienced continuing verbal, emotional, and psychological mistreatment. I increasingly felt portrayed as mentally ill, dangerous, dishonest, or incapable of making decisions for myself. I believe the scrutiny around the investigation was part of why the physical conduct stopped. That is my interpretation, not something I can establish about either parent’s private thoughts.

The fact that I had been closer to Luisa Fernanda Galvis Mora did not make this easier. I still wanted a relationship with my mother. I also felt that the explanations being given about me left little room for my own account of my life.

Read the account of the second admission and child protection services ↗

Trying to build something of my own

As I worked on building my business, I remember my mother repeatedly describing me to police as manic. These reports came in the context of me posting about my business, earning money, or choosing entrepreneurship rather than college. I felt that things I saw as work and ambition were being described as evidence that something was wrong with me.

I remember trying to explain to police and medical responders that I disputed what she was saying. Sometimes I recorded those interactions. I am describing what I remember trying to communicate while other people were being asked to make decisions about me.

I also remember my mother repeatedly accusing me of getting money through scams. Those were accusations I say she made, not an admission that my business was fraudulent. I felt I was trying to build an independent life while having to defend the legitimacy of what I was doing.

Over the years, I remember approximately eight psychiatric hospitalizations against my wishes, with stays generally lasting about two to six weeks. I remember descriptions of me as bipolar or manic repeatedly being used when police were called, and I felt my own explanations were discounted. I believe some reports were false and were used to remove me from home. That is my understanding of those events, not an independent finding about the clinical grounds for every admission.

Read about the later hospitalizations and their aftermath ↗

Outside the bank

Shortly after I turned eighteen, I went alone to open my first business bank account. I had legitimate business paperwork, and I was not trying to defraud the bank. My understanding was that my mother reported the car stolen and said I was going to scam the bank. I am not claiming firsthand knowledge of every part of the report or of exactly how it was communicated.

When I came out of the bank, I remember being surrounded by approximately five police cars in the center of town. There were many parked cars, which I remember as hundreds, and people were walking and driving past. I thought I was in trouble. I started recording.

I remember explaining that my bank visit was legitimate and describing how my parents had treated me. I also remember officers telling me that, because I had turned eighteen, I did not have to return home. That is what I remember being told in that encounter, not a general legal explanation for anyone else’s circumstances.

I left after that encounter. The exact date still needs confirmation, but I remember the significance of being told I could leave. I had gone to the bank to do something practical for my business. I came away understanding that I did not have to go straight back to the home I was afraid of.

Leaving, returning, and still hoping

After the bank encounter, I stayed in different places for several months while trying to build my business. I later returned home because I hoped the relationship could be repaired. Leaving did not immediately end my wish to have a family relationship that felt different from the one I had known.

My memories of the years before Chicago also include extensive travel, a return in September, and events in October before my eventual departure. I have not settled the exact years or the relationship between every one of these phases. I am keeping those parts approximate rather than arranging them into a calendar I cannot yet support.

On October 15, 2025, my mother yelled at me: “if you're making so much money just fucking leave nobody fucking wants you here”

The main story follows the departure from New Jersey and the drive to Chicago. This part of the account explains some of what came before it: attempts to become independent, time away, and the hope that returning might lead to something better.

Return to the main story and the drive to Chicago ↗

The first thing I remember her saying

My last hospitalization began in or around June 2024. I remember it as lasting about a month, or roughly five weeks. I have not confirmed the exact admission and discharge dates. Afterward, I remember returning to my parents following roughly five weeks without seeing or speaking with them.

The first thing I remember my mother saying was about the household water bill. In substance, she said it had been about $80 cheaper while I was away, that my showers were too long, and that I wasted money. I remember her tone as amused or laughing. This is my recollection of the meaning of the comment, not a claim to remember her exact words.

After weeks away in hospital, I experienced that comment as deeply hurtful. The thing being noticed about my absence seemed to be what it had saved on water. It made me feel that my being gone had been measured as a household expense, while what I had been through and how I was feeling went unacknowledged in that moment.

Read about the later admissions, medication, and recent reassessment ↗

A life that belongs to me

The labels I lived with affected how I understood myself. A team of 5 clinicians across 2 practices worked with me over 6 months and told me, 1 day before I published this website, that the bipolar diagnosis was not correct and identified PTSD and ADHD instead. That is what I was told and diagnosed with, not a conclusion independently verified by this website.

During 2026, I describe having my medication gradually reduced under a clinician’s supervision over approximately six months. I felt clearer and more emotionally present as that happened. At the time of writing, I report being off the psychiatric medications described in this account. That is part of my own experience, not advice about anyone else’s treatment.

I have been working toward telling this story throughout 2026. The recent reassessment is one reason I feel ready to describe the relationship with my mother in my own words, including the parts that are painful and the parts that do not fit a simple account.

My life now contains love for Samara, my friends, and the family I found. It contains my business, my apartment, my hobbies, and the ordinary enjoyment I did not know how to feel before. The story of my relationship with my mother belongs within that larger story. It does not get to be the ending.

I did not just leave a place. I found my way home.

Read about the family I found ↗

Return to my life in Chicago ↗

Read the fuller account of the hospitalizations and reassessment ↗