This conference was all heart

By CRISTINA KUMKA Herald Staff

It has four sides and lots of love inside.

It’s called a love box and for the past four years, Rutland Town’s Celeste Perrino-Walker has let her husband and children know she’s thinking about them by putting tiny notes in it for each of them to read.

With a little effort and lots of heart, her notes have worked.

An old Hershey Kiss wrapper inscribed with the words, “You’re truly scrumptious,” placed inside the box for her husband really brightened his day, Perrino-Walker said, and it made her feel even more special.

“Life is so busy now and complicated and chaotic,” she said. “It’s so easy to forget that people love you and remind them that you feel the same. Many times you only know it and you only tell them after they’re gone.”

Perrino-Walker isn’t the only local resident who says she knows what the power of love can do.

Cinda Payton, 49, co-founder of Empowerment Workshops of Vermont and an elder care clinician with Rutland Mental Health Services, reminded people of this Saturday.

Payton hosted “The Love Conference,” at the College of St. Joseph from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to raise awareness of a feeling she says is the answer to most of life’s questions.

The conference was founded on one of Payton’s professional and personal realizations.

“In my work I kept bumping up against people who didn’t know how to love themselves and didn’t know how to make themselves happy,” she said.

“They didn’t have a clue.”

Not knowing how to love yourself can have disastrous effects, according to Payton, who said she’s all too familiar with giving too much to others while disregarding her own needs, especially during her darkest hour.

“In my late 20s, I was looking at a divorce and it was unexpected,” she said.

“I was suddenly alone at my house and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I spent all my time making other people happy.”

Payton said she wants to share with others what she knows now — that you can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first.

“I knew I had to change, I had to stop judging, criticizing and not appreciated myself,” the mother and longtime Goshen resident said.

“We’re taught not to be selfish, we’re taught to pour ourselves out for other people and that formula doesn’t work.”

Instead, Payton said she realized “everything in life is based” on love and it must start in the person’s own heart.

Payton said she hopes her original love conference will draw a crowd of people looking to foster better relationships with their own hearts and minds.

She says she’s going to portray a message of love that’s sure to linger, in case her words don’t immediately sink in.

“The relationship we have with ourselves is the most important thing we have and that relationship will determine the quality of our life,” she said.

Rutland social worker and psychotherapist Mary Ann Boyd agreed. She said the Beatles song rings true.

“It may not be all you need but it sure does help,” Boyd said.

For Perrino-Walker, displaying her love is essential to living a life she says she wants to lead, one free from regret.

“It’s important to tell people how you feel because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” she said.

“Wouldn’t you be sad to know you didn’t?”

Contact Cristina Kumka at cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com.