When you hit the things that are relevant to the next generation, - it's a way for young people to feel like "Somebody understands me. Church is not irrelevant. I feel that my hurts are being addressed. Things that I am concerned about are being talked about."

As I got older, the role that I ended up (playing) on One Life to Live was a mother because, by then, I had a stable marriage - so I thought - and a beautiful son and mother roles became what I was doing well. I was still the Latina mom who very much related to people who love family. All those traditional values (were) coming back into my life.

God sent me a woman who was an older woman - who wasn't much older than me but she was older in the sense (of her relationship with) the Lord...She started guiding me. She was very much a model for my life.

I had a very marginal understanding of what faith in God was growing up because, although I went to a Catholic school, without having parents who really were actively involved in faith there was no reinforcement of it. So, as a result of that I guess I just kind of thought that God was somebody that you put in a box and you put Him on a shelf and you called on him when you had crises.

If I could look back at the seeds of faith, they were planted back then. I remember in my early teenage years - when, naturally, we become more rebellious, prideful, self-directed and self-willed - I had this nun, Sister Mary Martinella, I'll never forget her - only because of one thing that she said that stuck in my spirit. And it was a rebuke.

When my marriage fell apart I started reevaluating my life and I started to call on the Lord.

The experience I had all those 40 years of working on Broadway and working on television, I bring it to students and I let them kind of drain me dry but they all feel at the end of the class that they are getting so much out of it. The students grow in my classroom because they feel safe. They don't feel like they're going to be yelled at.