Living the Question

"Community of Light "
by Candee Basford
Copywrite 2005

Mary Beth Pilewski Paul of Westerville, Ohio, grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania. Her life has been shaped by an uncle who spent many years in a large state institution, (and later returned to live in the Erie l'Arche community), as well as by a little sister who had Down syndrome and passed away at age four. Mary Beth, as well as another brother and sister of hers, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in special education. Providence led Mary Beth to live in a l'Arche community in Syracuse, New York, where she spent 18 months. During that time she attended several of Wolf Wolfensberger's workshops as well as met people from l'Arche communities all over the world.

Mary Beth spent many years working with adults with disabilities. She most enjoyed assisting people with living independently in their own apartments. She and her husband, Peter Paul, spent their first year and a half of marriage living with people with disabilities in community-based settings.

After retiring from work in human services in order to pursue interests in the art world, Mary Beth gave birth to her and Peter's first child, a beautiful, healthy boy, Peter Benedict. Peter Ben has Down syndrome, as fate would have it, and later was also diagnosed with autism. Peter Ben's challenging school years has led Mary Beth back to involvement in advocacy for people with disabilities, which is how she came to meet Candee Basford and learn about Action Learning. She says that "Action Learning changed my life. The opportunity to reflect deeply about the events in my life and how to best respond to them has helped me replace despair or anger with meaningfulness." Candee and other friends from Action Learning led Mary Beth back to TASH, as well as encouraged her to write about her reflections.

e-mail paul.3@osu.edu