“You don’t start a story like mine with fairy tales. There’s no once upon a time. No glass slipper. Just a girl. A name. A silence so loud it swallowed her whole.”

Divinity Renee Destiny Rivera.

Black and Puerto Rican. Green eyes, deep dimples, caramel complexion. Long, thick waves of black hair that once made people call me “pretty” before they ever called me “worth saving.” I was born in between places—between cultures, between languages, between love and loss. My mother gave me that name like a prayer. Like prophecy. But for a long time, it felt more like a warning.

Because I was never the girl people thought I was.
On the surface, I laughed too loud and dressed too bright. I was bold in the halls at thirteen. Quick with comebacks. Always the one with jokes. But inside? I was drowning. By the time I was eighteen, I had lived more lives than some people twice my age. Done too much. Seen too much. Carried things I never asked to hold. And it nearly killed me.

Before the testimonies. Before the stages. Before the “you’re so strong” speeches, there was a couch I slept on that wasn’t mine. A school I disappeared from without anyone asking why. A boyfriend who held my dreams hostage and said it was love. A baby I didn’t think I could raise. A God I stopped believing was listening.
And still—somehow—I lived.
Not just breathing. Not just surviving.
Lived.
With cracked ribs and scraped knees and a voice that shook every time I tried to use it. But I used it anyway.
Because something in me refused to die.

Not every story begins with light. Some begin in silence. Mine began with a name I dared not speak and a wound I wore like skin. I wasn’t born brave. I wasn’t born whole. I was born already breaking.

This is my testimony. This is Divinity in Motion.