Amazing Women Rock - Grateful For Pain That Led To Passion

Grateful For Pain That Led To Passion

By Loretta A. Cella
March 31, 2009

I grew up in Canada, in a Vancouver, BC suburb. My parents are of Italian decent. They knew what it was like to grow up poor, so they did all they could to prevent their children from having to experience the same stresses with which they had struggled as kids.

I was placed in a system of structure and faith from a very young age. I can safely say that from the age of about six years I knew I was different.

A creative tomboy at heart, I hated my lace knee-high church socks, and the catholic school uniform. I never really felt comfortable unless I had some pants on (unknowingly that has been the underlying metaphor all my life - always taking charge, and having to be in control of my own destiny.)

By grade one I had learnt to hide my sadness with anger, and to use my hands more than words, often using my fists after my words to get my point across.

By grade three I had spent two summers in school doing tests, and getting help to read “better,” instead of being on normal holiday like the other kids. It wasn’t until years later that I learnt that how I was dealt with at school created a gap in me, a missing piece to the puzzle, the part that had the word “self esteem” on it.

Troubled Teenage Years

In high school I struggled with social and cultural norms; I felt torn between “freedom” and family rules. I was always in trouble. By grade 10 I had a big drug misuse habit which led me to the “wrong” friends and the “wrong” places (that at the time felt so “right”).

I ran away from home often, and dropped out of school.

I felt like people were constantly trying to categorize me, when all I wanted was to be good with who I was. After a couple interventions, and almost a year into a 12-step program, my boyfriend at the time died suddenly. Once again my world collapsed, and I hit a new low.

I remember asking myself, how at 16, could my life have fallen apart so many times? It was then, in a 12-step program, that met I my first mentor and sponsor. She quickly saw potential in me that I had never seen in myself.

She would sit me down for “talks”, take me for coffee, and treat me differently, MUCH differently than anyone I knew. She taught me things, lectured me and “laid down the law,” but in a way that I understood and respected.

At 19, I had three amazing women who invested their spirits in me: they gave me time, energy, love, and encouragement. And, whenever I needed it (which was quite regularly), they gave me a swift kick in the behind.

Tough Reality Sparks Deep Passion

I knew then that I wanted to help people in the way I had been helped. I was saddened by the reality of all I had experienced in life and the horrible things I witnessed with friends (addictions, death, violence, abuse, prostitution, and dysfunction). But my fight for “more” sparked my passion.

Unfortunately, circumstances conspired against me yet again: I lost my job, broke-up with my first real love, and had a lump removed from my breast – all in a month’s time.

I felt lost and deeply depressed. I wanted to run away and hide from the world. At the time, that either meant death, or a geographical change. I chose to run away, but this time I ran toward peace, it was a positive escape into family, love and my roots. My father called family in Italy, and I took off on a two-month journey to find my roots and myself. It was the first time that I spread my wings rather than sitting in what I like to call a “dirty diaper.”

When I returned, I went back to school to study Child and Youth Care Counseling. I worked for a while with kids in Vancouver, then went for a year to Scarborough, Ontario, where I expanded my horizons and range of experience as a program worker with the YWCA.

The year in Scarborough provided another golden opportunity for personal growth.

It was a new, big city, where I didn’t have many friends, and my work was cut out for me on a personal and professional level.

As the main program worker in a housing unit for abused women and their children, my job was to create programming that would help the community who lived there. I often worked over 50 hours a week as I struggled to create everything from scratch in an environment riddled with violence, drugs, and what we in the community work business like to call a “ghetto” lifestyle.

Exhausting, Yet Rewarding

A year later I was completed burnt out. But I had successfully established six programs that not only engaged over 50 women, children and youth, but an array of community connections as well, from local police to public health professionals and a range of community agencies.

Looking back, I can safely say it was one of the most rewarding experiences in my life so far. Four years later, I still have connections with many of the families with whom I worked, and I’ve visited them several times since.

It was there in Toronto, as I sat alone at the local coffee shop recording my thoughts and feelings, that I began to envision the possibility of integrating my work with the deep passion that had begun to form around what I believe is my purpose in life.

I realized that I had been able to create a community for those women and children, in the same way that my family and the mentors who helped me so much had created one for me. I had been instrumental in exposing them to the same kind of values, principles and skills that my parents had tried to teach me, but that I just hadn’t “gotten” as a young girl.

The Road Rejuvenates

The following year I stayed in Vancouver for a short time before taking a much-needed, loosely planned three-month-long trip to Thailand and India.

Yet again, I felt tired and disconnected from myself. I had given everything I had during my time in Toronto and I vowed to make this journey one that would help me to learn more balance. At the same time, I sought meaning and inspiration – sustenance to feed my weary spirit.

I will remember for the rest of my life the people, places, adventures, cultures, and sometimes the frustration being a lone female traveler. I saw more things than I had ever dreamed possible, and I met people that changed my world forever. I came back whole in mind, body and spirit, ready to tackle the next chapter in my life.

With the help of Dr. Jan Hill, who is now a member of the Board of Directors for The Passion Foundation, I was able to make my dream come alive. Thanks to Women with PURPOSE, a network of women that I created when I returned home, I have been able to achieve greater balance between my work and my social life as well as a deeper connection with my family.

Today, thanks to McCarthy Tetrault, a leading Canadian law firm, and Network of Inner City Community Services in Vancouver, BC, I’m now involved with an amazing group of young women who are working on a performance that will be much like the Vagina Monologues, but based on the stories of young women.

Inspired & Alive

Last year, with the help of LunaPads, I went on an amazing trip to Kenya to volunteer and work with an amazing grassroots organization called Africa Youth Trust.

I was so inspired by my trip there that I was able to complete the first half of my book, Phenomenal Women, The Empowerment of You, while I was there.

Thanks to all the amazing women in my life, especially my mentor and godsend Dr. Jan Hill, I made a leap into life coaching a couple years ago, and now have a successful practice based in Vancouver.

I am inspired and alive. I have wonderful visions of what the future holds for The Passion Foundation, and for young women around the world.

Who knew that the challenges, hardships and pain that I experienced in my teens and early twenties would be the soil from which such a beautiful life would sprout tentatively, and then carefully tended by myself and others, grow and blossom so spectacularly?

I never would have expected those dark times to lead me to a place full of learning and giving back to others. For that I am so grateful and because of this, whatever knowledge, strength in spirit, and tools I’ve gained belong not only to me, but also to all the young women with whom I work.

Related links:
Leaders Need Passionate Teams, Especially in Tough Times
Isabel Allende Tells Tales of Passion

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