People always tell me, "You have a beautiful name." Contrary to that is my strong aversion to my own name when I was a little girl. I remember questioning my Mamang (mother) as we scooped the palay (unhusked rice) one afternoon, '"Bakit Aurora?" (Why Aurora?) I had wished for a name change.

"But why did you name me Aurora, Mother? What does that even mean?" She explained, "It means the crack of dawn." As I grew older, I started to understand why... It's because of the things I needed to do--wake up early and do work when I was young... at the crack of dawn.

In this book are stories from my childhood and life's challenges as I walked through adulthood and motherhood--sharing with you my sad experiences and the lessons I learned from them.

My name is AURORA, and I cracked the dawn when my life was almost doomed in the darkness of grief, tears, struggles, and pains. I was persistent and lived the Bible passage that I came across when I was a teenager. Mark 11:24 says, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will have it, and it will be yours." My long wait seemed endless, and it was when I was at the brink of giving up when God spoke to me in a song and said, "When you see only one set of footprints, it was when I carried you." (Footprints in the Sand)

I would like to invite you to be my friend, and together, let's build a loving relationship with God as we raise funds for my distantly unknown friends, who will then become your friends, the beneficiaries from the proceeds of this book. Let us help them crack their own dawn...

Aurora P. Sta. Ana is a mother of five children, a wife, an elementary teacher since 1990, a daughter, a sister, a church volunteer, a believer of God, a friend to many people, and someone who survived life's challenges since she was very young.