Cecilia Talks About Cecilia
My fifth grade teacher used to sing to me, “How do you solve a problem like Cecilia?” And then while learning to build wooden boats at the Rockport Apprenticeship in Maine, almost 25 years later, the other apprentices used to sing the same song to me. What is it about Cecilia that causes people to smile and sing and wonder about her inquisitiveness?
I came from a family of eight children. Mom left when I was 3 years old and so I was raised by my alcoholic Dad; and more accurately by my brothers and sisters. And so I became a survivor. Born into a crisis situation and moving from one crisis to another only to find that I could weather the next avalanche. In reality my passion and enthusiasm for life was never squashed. When I was in the fifth grade, I had a wonderful teacher –– Sister Pauline Marie Petruzella––who greatly influenced me. She was an inspiring woman who always asked her students to find their greatest heart’s desire . . . to follow their dreams . . . to do the necessary work to become a genuine human being, so as to be of service to others. Sister Pauline exemplified her own favorite saying: “Actions speak louder than words.” Sister Pauline invited me to look beyond the circumstances of my family life, and in responding to her invitation I began a lifelong journey inward.
I questioned everything. I wanted life to be less of a struggle; I wondered how I could change myself to become “like everybody else,” and wondered why life felt so hard for me when people all around me seemed to be enjoying it, or at least having an easier time. I believed that crises in life were to be lessons to be learned from. Instead, for me they just wore me down. Yet, I persevered in my quest.
At seventeen, in the midst of all these questions and this search for a purpose in life, I took a summer job in a pickle factory. There I met John Mildrew, a kind man who, like Sister Pauline Marie, had great enthusiasm for life. He was a high school physics and calculus teacher who was working a summer factory job. In his conversations with me, Mr. Mildrew offered me the gift of believing in myself. He helped me to see that each day brings a very blessed opportunity; and he helped me to expand my view of the world. So, with John Mildrew’s steadfast encouragement, my fifth grade dream of becoming a teacher resurfaced.
I spent the next two years working as a legal secretary to pay my college expenses. I wanted to bring to fruition the seed planted by Sister Pauline and nurtured by Mr. Mildrew. I wondered if I could bring all my life experiences––including the challenges––to a classroom. Maybe I could affect children in the same way that those two dedicated teachers had affected me: with hope, love, and encouragement. And so I received the necessary education and began teaching.
My first five years in special education brought much satisfaction, yet on the whole they left me feeling disheartened. I had over-idealized a career as a teacher, thinking I could touch the life of every child as profoundly as my fifth grade teacher had touched my own life. At the end of those five years, I left the classroom to turn my energies to other endeavors. I even established a private school for youth-at-risk where I taught the teenagers how to build wooden boats.
In the midst of these varied career experiences. I found myself still searching for happiness and inner peace, so I retreated from the world for two years at a place called Gentle Wind in Kittery, Maine. Through this retreat experience I began to be able to accept myself for who I am and to work with the personal resources available to me. It’s difficult to put into words the quantum leap in awareness that I was able to take. The Gentle Wind Project continues to be the focal point of my ability to grow into a self-actualized human being who invites the spirit of truth and practicality into my everyday life.
I now continue to offer to children of all abilities, a space––not an actual place, rather an opportunity that we share in one another’s presence––where we each can grow. This space is similar to the one offered me while I was on retreat at Gentle Wind. It is a space that is sacred, where each can explore, live in peace, and come to discover his or her inner self while living in this tumultuous world.
In private consultations, teaching workshops, or working in classroom settings, I hold the intention of creating this kind of gentle, open environment where everyone can learn how to learn. Movement-based learning is the ideal resource to draw from in creating this kind of environment, for it honors the learner at any level of progress and addresses the physical comfort and ease of learning as requisite to mental performance. The simple foundational exercises that I teach and use also give me a way to address my own fears and learning blocks, thus modeling the self-actualizing behaviors I would like my students to discover in themselves.
And as the Orian Mountain Dreamer so eloquently stated, “It doesn’t interest me how old you are [or what kind of ability of disability you have] I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool, for love, for your dreams for the adventure of being alive.”