I'm grateful that I was raised in Roman Catholicism. My parents were good, kind people and never strict: I was fortunate to never meet an abusive priest or nun. I was sent to a Church Of England girl's school, at which I encountered teachers who were also good and kind.
So by the age of seven, I had worked out a list of prayers that I repeated in sequence. Every night. As I grew older, I turned away from God yet still found solace in this prayer sequence during troubled times. And still do.
There were seven prayers. As a child, I decided to start with the prayers I considered the least important and work up to the big one - the Lord's Prayer. Here they are:
Depending on my mood, or whether I'd fallen peacefully asleep, I might finish with a Glory Be:
