I remember when I was 9 years old, I used to walk past a school for children while walking back from a “school tutoring” course that I attended twice a week so that I could follow what was being taught at school more easily.

I was in the midst of so much internal disharmony in the search to memorize verb tenses, prepositions and fine-tune my relationship with numbers. Each time I would pass by the school for children, it was as if I was certain that I only needed to “knock on the door” and speak to the owners of that school for them to give me a job opportunity there. That voice was almost a sweet and emotional cry that came from the middle of my chest. A beautiful and raw Sun. Without formalities.

I asked myself multiple times while passing by that school: “but why do I have to memorize so much if I know that I am here to support children”?

My favorite game to play was to give classes to the plants or empty chairs, “my students” at the time. I always said to myself while organizning the room with chairs, a board and a long stick: “I know I am not talking to myself. I also know that I am preparing myself for what comes next.” Time passed and I let that “sweet cry” go to sleep. I lived the raw Sun in my chest silently every time I met children younger than me.

At the age of 14, I decided that I wanted to work. I opened up the yellow pages and looked through all of the options to see what I could do at that age. Then I came across the term “children’s party entertainment.” I called a few companies, scheduled an interview, and went with my father to report for work. After that day, I began working with children at parties and understanding firsthand how our relationship worked in practice, now from a more professional perspective.

My relationship with children became less casual and more formal. I began to get involved in volunteer projects for churches and communities in vulnerable situations. I began to create and teach classes for children of different ages, based on what caught my attention in each of them. That was super natural for me. I remember creating what would be used for my classes right when the class was about to start. And everything was going really well. Children engaged beautifully and used to bring to our meetings such a magical combination! 

Life went on and I started to not understand how that would be part of my life, after all, the world of paying the bills was calling me and I didn’t understand the possibility of continuing with that calling as a primary source of income. Back then, the world told me that “there was no future workinh on the childhood field” and I, without being grounded in my golden Sun, believed that noise.

I started law school, continued with volunteer work and got closer to environmental law, preparing from scratch classes for young people, adults and seniors, people management and the process of self-knowledge through coaching and other energy tools – at this time I used to look for names to understand more what I had access to in the invisible world since early in my childhood. I began to identify how I could well I could manage any type of conflict and mediation. Another layer uncovered during this extra path I decided to follow. I became involved with different wonderful opportunities that came in the form of work such as “conflict mediation” in a group of companies with more than 150 employees. In the world of formalities, the girl who screamed sweetly toward involvement with children was losing the voice that came from her chest and nurturing other little pieces that made up the disharmony that, with its ever-important importance, was asking for passage. I took awhile to understand why the combination of all the components was really important.

Yet, the forgetting was too painful. 

One day, while working as a conflict mediator in that business group, I woke up asking for another degree. The pedagogy course began to speak louder. My sweet Sun emanated from my chest again. But wait a minute, it wasn’t exactly what I thought! I philosophized in absolutely every subject, questioned all the teachers and didn’t understand the numbers and memorization of the content that involved the entire class.

I found myself looking for internship opportunities and saw that I was interviewing schools to understand if I really fit in there. I looked at the little pieces of disharmony, now outside of me and saw no space to exist fully. Time to give up. I canceled my enrollment and moved on to my next step. Would the world and life always be like this? An eternal movement of fitting into pre-formatted spaces? I could not conform again! 

I questioned, wrote about my questions, and asked people. I never heard an answer different from the ones I had already heard. And I kept asking: and these children, how are they being seen and cared for? What depths go unnoticed by educators and teachers? why are they blinding following pre formated pedagogical approahces while children are struggling in the classroom? I See them, could it be that no one else is Seeing them? I lived in an ocean of questions, and like a fish out of water I kept swimming in search of the Sun that shone in my chest. This Sun was called certainty , but because there was no place for it to exist, this certainty slept restlessly. 

Among other jobs and processes, I got to know a foster home. 

For the first time I was invited to feel at home. Dona Salete and Mr. Severino opened the doors to me so that I could Exist and thus welcome each child who lived there in their entirety, even with the existing limitations. This was the beginning of a revolution.

That was the beginning of a revolution. I spent 7 years there in that bitter-sweet home.

I moved to another country, worked with children for years, and during this process I went on to formally specialize once again as an Early Childhood Professional. At that time, I still understood that I needed a certificate to fit in somewhere. I took two courses, one as an assistant and the other as an educator. Two more opportunities to delve deeper into the little things that were not seen by those who composed the courses. My dream of working with children now with an international certification.

-Ah! I think it will be different now, after all, we are talking about “first world” education.

But who started this story? I started to question everything once again. I was always in the coordinators’ and teachers’ offices looking for something new or for someone who could open doors to a different way of approaching things. There they saw me crying a lot! I was exhausted but I “kept swimming”! The new things were always the pedagogical proposals that presented themselves as alternatives ways or non traditional. I kept begging for something different. Few could read it. Rare could hear me. The answer was always: “It is what it is”. I questioned the classes, the internships, the dynamics, the approaches.

I went after other students, asked them to collect signatures requesting something different from what was being offered. The truth is that I didn’t have much support from the students either. I couldn’t accept it, simply because the 9-year-old girl never understood life the same way as others and rebuilt everything along the way to create her own space of existence, unconditionally.

During the course, I had the opportunity to meet a teacher who saw me. She gave me free themes for all the work she assigned to the class, and she gave me open answers to the questions on the tests. I wrote as if I were painting the sky. FREELY. It was the first time, finally, that I was able to express myself fully and talk about untouchable or crazy topics. Her answers complemented mine in an inexplicable way. But what a good feeling. Needless to say, every semester I looked for the subjects she taught. Vidya. Her name was like a warm blanket in the winter at the North Pole. I can’t tell you how much I also challenged other teachers and ended up receiving four times.  ” Letter in Recognition of your Honours”.

I finished my course with a different proposal. I went to Tanzania, at the height of the pandemic in 2021, to renovate a school that I didn’t know would be like. All I Knew was that I would meet that place halfway, and so I went knocking on doors until I managed to get in. There were 200 Canadian dollars collected from donations and a backpack with some toys collected to make this happen. I remember walking around looking at the ground to find little pieces of waste to create sensory panels for the children. Finding the tools to assemble these panels calls for another page in this book.

We were in a remote village, with little communication, without knowing how to speak Swahili and managing the days so that we could return with the mission accomplished. I woke up at 4 in the morning  for days and days to get an internet signal and complete the training course in Early Childhood Education in Canada and to hand in the work on time, meeting all of the many weird requirements. After that, I went about my day to be free inm True Nature .

Why did I highlight some details of this experience? Because there, I lived the impossible and understood that the only thing that prevents us from changing the world is our permission to be smaller than conformism and the external control over us. Returning to where I live and passing through the various workplaces, schools, child development centers and even alternative pods and micro schools created by homeschooler and unschooler families, I noticed that parents and educators still experienced generational gaps in the education system.

But why does this cycle seem to never end?

Orotea arrived and transformed the way these gaps could be filled. The harmonization process was the answer to everything. Over the course of another 4 years, I worked with families, schools and children using the Orotea approach and today I have developed a complementary harmonization curriculum and program, called the “Harmonizing the Childs World” , which maps the individuality of each child, supports the application of existing pedagogical proposals, provides more tools for educators and families, directs physical spaces that are part of the child’s reality and supports individuals to delve into their own individual processes, thus opening space for the children’s reality to happen beyond the already known programming in the process of life.

The 9-year-old girl now softly tells the world that the Sun that shone quietly in her chest now expands and takes its sunny rays so that other children can experience themselves completely, beyond verb tenses, equations and periodic tables. I already Knew everything, I just didn’t know I could experience my True Nature since my childhood.

Today I invite you to dive into this world of possibilities with me.

Orotea,

Free yourself in Harmony.

The environment is a combination of Mini World that, in this case, refers to the child’s home environment, combined with sensory exploratory elements, wording enlightenment, problem solving play activities, and body awareness engaging opportunities.

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The whole Human Being and all nuances and subtleties that composes its Space/ space are considered during the sessions.

Harmony through a process of Witnessing patterns, behaviors, dynamics, triggers, resistances, and lack of resolution related to:

• The child’s inner dynamics
• The child and their physical environment;
• Involving the family and the child 
• Involving children and childhood professionals 
• Both the child and the school;
• The child and the curriculum
• The adult who was once a child.

-Acknowledging and addressing emotional opportunities 

-Guiding and supporting integration of a different State/state of Being.

-Offering feedbacks and reflections to parents/caregivers/childhood professionals

Orotea focuses on both the visible and invisible aspects of the Wholistic Human Being approach.