Healing Gardens

            On April 22, 1979 at 4:03 A.M. the first of two twins was born to Sandra Ahern and Lenny Sunzeri. Four minutes later at 4:07 the second baby was pulled from Sandra’s womb via c-section. Alas Sandra had the baby girl that she had hoped and dreamed for.

            The twins (Neal and Catherine) were raised in a small, sleepy town on Cape Cod until the age of 9. Sandra remarried at that time and Florida was calling. She moved Neal and Catherine to Vero Beach on the west coast of Florida and remained there for two short years.  For the remainder of their school years the twins would live a dual life. Half on Cape Cod and half in Florida until their senior year in high school when they would return to Cape Cod for the last time, against their own will.

            As the winter was beginning to come to a close in the year 1998 the twin’s lives would be forever changed by a phone call. At around 7 P.M. on February 27^th Catherine learned that her step father Jim had been in a fatal car accident. He would not be returning from Florida. Not ever. Both of the twins were devastated by this news and handled it in their own ways. It proved too great of a hardship for Catherine and she fell ill not long after she had received the phone call. After what seemed like a life time, but was really only a month Catherine recovered from spinal meningitis and was able to leave her bedroom where she had been quarantined for over thirty days.

            With all the time she spent alone during that month she had made some decisions about what direction in which she would like her life to go. She decided not to finish high school and to get a job instead. She worked at a local watering hole in the town that she was raised and after a year she had more money saved than she could have imagined. With that money she bought a backpack, a lonely planet book on Costa Rica and a plane ticket. This was an empowering experience for Catherine and a way for her to forget the past and start anew. She would continue traveling for five years and visit places like Jamaica, Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and Great Britain. During her years of travel her mom, Sandra, relocated to Seattle, Washington and her twin brother Neal began attending school at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. This is where Catherine would continue her life after her oversees travels. For two years Catherine lived in Seattle, worked at a bar and traveled around the US every chance she got. She soon began to realize that there was more to life than traveling the planet alone. She had hopes and dreams and a pocket full of confidence and with that she set out to accomplish what no one in her family believed she was capable of…college. She enrolled at The Evergreen State College in the fall of 2004 to pursue her interests in early childhood education, art, nature and movement. Catherine is now a thriving junior at TESC and has a boyfriend and dog that she spends her days and nights with. 

Catherine & Tahoma at Cushman