Go Buggy Go

By Maria D'Alessandro

Go Buggy Go is about how negative patterns and beliefs can lead to self-sabotage and not feeling good enough. Its about how to use embedded beliefs and patterns as guiding lessons to learn to live from a more healed, higher-self perspective. Its about relationships, finding self-love, and discovering inner strength. It is about love, loss, triumphs, and failures. It involves emotions that range from fear, resentment, and depression to forgiveness, perseverance, and courage. It is about a journey of realigning with ones true, higher self and the struggle it takes to do so when one has strayed so far for so long from that place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504393904

Maria D'Alessandro

Maria DAlessandro is a Certified Yoga Instructor and a MA Licensed Teacher with a Masters Degree in Special Education. She was born and raised in Boston, MA where she raised her two children, and still resides. She has used her life experiences and challenges as lessons to grow and develop her self-awareness and self-confidence to make choices in her life that are guided by her intuition and her desire to live the life that she believes she has been destined for. It is her intention to share her experiences with others who may be on a similar journey and perhaps inspire others to begin to find their own path and begin their journey as well.

Book preview

1

Buggy

A s my parents’ firstborn child, I delayed my entrance into the physical world by ten days, perhaps subconsciously aware of the struggles and life experiences that lay ahead. After all, our souls choose to reincarnate to make peace with what we haven’t been able to figure out in the past—so this tiny being contemplated and resisted, as she would often do in the years to come. Overcome with anxiety and fear, which caused a loss of oxygen as she emerged, this determined little soul chose courage and was ready to face this lifetime.

The doctors informed my mother that I might have brain damage as a result of the oxygen loss. Hmm—not quite. I was a colicky baby, and I’m told that I didn’t sleep very well. Perhaps I was still worried and unsure about whether I could handle what I was about to take on. Excessive worry and stress do not allow for a restful sleep. My father nicknamed me Buggy as a result. You were like a bug, my parents told me.

I was always curious about where he came up with Bug. I don’t think I ever asked him personally. But it was a question that people and other kids asked constantly, and I had to answer and explain it. That nickname has stuck with me my whole life. But it never truly resonated with me, and I’m not sure if that was my father’s intention.

Even now, family and friends will call me Bug. Sometimes my own name sounds funny to say because I’m so used to people calling me Buggy. I’ve noticed that when I give my name over the phone to sales reps or even when making reservations, people repeat it back to me in a questioning tone. Maria? It’s as if I don’t say it clearly or correctly, I don’t know.

People used to ask me, What’s your real name? or they would say, "Maria doesn’t sound right. I can only call you Buggy."

I’d blow it off, laugh, and say, Whichever. I don’t mind.

Deep down, though, I did mind—and still do. I grew used to it, but I never wanted to be called Buggy or Bug. People who didn’t know me when I was younger call me Maria. I don’t tell people that I’m called Buggy unless someone calls me by that name in front of someone who doesn’t know it—a colleague, for example—and then I usually explain that it was a childhood nickname and tell the story of how it came to be. I always feel compelled to do so.

From a very young age, my family would encourage my high energy and enthusiasm. They’d love to get me going. As the firstborn child, grandchild, and niece on both sides of my family, I was the center of attention for a while. When they’d get me going, they would chant in a singsong way, Go, Buggy, go! Go, Buggy, go! and I would run around doing a little dance to this chanting. Even to this day, they still say it. Sometimes when I am in spin class or hiking up a mountain, I’ll chant it in my head to motivate and push myself. It’s like my personal mantra.

The brain-damage theory continued to be discounted. When I was in kindergarten, I was slated for a double promotion, which my mother decided was not best for me. I went on to first grade and excelled in elementary school, especially in grades 1 through 4. School was easy for me. I was always a top student in my class of thirty-six at our neighborhood Catholic school.

In sixth grade, I took the standardized test to get into a prestigious public exam school; one had to excel on a standardized exam in order to be selected. I was among the few in my class to be invited to attend. However, I did not. My friends weren’t going, and I would have had to take a bus across town through the tunnel.

My mother was not in favor of sending me to the other side—on a bus! East Boston is the only part of Boston on the opposite side of the Sumner/Callahan Tunnel from the rest of the city. For the most part, East Bostonians stayed on the Sumner side of the tunnel, at least in my experience.

Besides, I loved my neighborhood school, and it was easy for me there. The exam school would’ve been hard, with too much homework, and it might have interfered with my dance classes. This is an example of the mind-set I had developed: Stay small. Play it safe. Little did I know that this message was being planted deep and would hold me back for years to come.

2

Dancing School

M y mother enrolled me in dance school when I was two years old, and I attended for sixteen years. My sister, cousins, and family friends had all attended the dance school at some point. It was in our neighborhood and had been there for decades. The school was around the corner from my great-aunt Mae’s first-floor, four-room apartment, which was the heart and soul of our large extended Italian family’s heritage.

Most of our dance classes were on Saturday, and everyone would gather at Auntie Mae’s house throughout the day. Sometimes we would be there from early afternoon until we begged to sleep over and watch Saturday Night Live while the adults drank coffee or alcohol, perhaps, and smoked cigarettes. There were always several concurrent conversations going amid the laughter and likely bickering among the elder siblings. Auntie Mae was the matriarch on my mother’s side of the family. There were ten siblings in all—six sisters and four brothers—along with their husbands and wives, adult children, and close friends of the family, all of which could appear at any given moment.

Dance school became my sanctuary. My teachers, classmates, and some of the parents became family to me. I was passionate about dance from the moment I set foot on the dance floor. I couldn’t wait for classes every week.

The owner of the studio was my idol. I loved and admired her. She was so poised, and I aspired to be like her one day. From a very young age, I strived to be the best I could be, and dance gave me the opportunity to express myself in a way nothing else did. I studied tap, jazz, and ballet. I even did ballet on pointe for a couple of years, which I loved. I also attempted acrobatics, but it wasn’t my thing. I actually had too much fear and anxiety to do it.

I performed in group and solo numbers. My cousin and I did a duet for a few years as well. I loved performing onstage at the annual dance recital. It was at an auditorium in Boston, and we had a makeup artist, dressing rooms, and a live orchestra for the show. We would have weekly rehearsals in the studio with the orchestra’s piano player, but dancing onstage with that live orchestra was quite a big deal. I wanted to be a dancer when I grew up—a Rockette.

I started competing in a local dance competition with my dance school when I was in the sixth grade. The competitions were held at local hotels. Many of us from the dance school would compete with our solos. If you placed in the local competition, you would move on to compete in New York City. Somehow, we all managed to place in the local competition and travel to New York City. This was a big deal!

I loved going to New York with my friends and our moms. We would travel by bus or train and stay in the hotel where the competition was held. We were young and silly, and it was a lot of fun. Although we didn’t take it too seriously and everyone got a trophy, the part for me that wasn’t so much fun was that I never had any notable success in the competition with my solos. I never made it to the second round.

My most notable recognition was when I received an award for Most Radiant Smile. Even though it was a talent competition and my talent was dance, I was proud of this special recognition. I remember, after we got home, telling my friend Mark about this award, and he was confused as to why I would win that award for a dance competition. I was almost embarrassed explaining it, but I was also a little confused by it and didn’t want to say that I just wasn’t good enough to place in the dance competition, so they basically gave me a consolation prize.

I was the only one to receive that prize. There were other special awards, for best costume and others that I don’t recall, but I was excited about my recognition because my dance teacher stressed to us that we should smile when we performed. I loved to dance, and although I would put on a stage smile, I really was loving performing, and it was genuine.

I competed again the next year with my solo as well as my tap class. Although I didn’t make it to the finals for my solo, our tap class did make it, and we came in third place overall. This was pretty awesome. I still remember the ending of the dance where we were doing trenches for three counts of eight before the final pose on the third eight.

The following year, when I was in the eighth grade, I competed with my solo again in the local competition. I finally won first place in the jazz category with my dance to City Lights by Liza Minnelli. I loved my song and my dance. I had a cane as a prop in the dance and wore a top hat. My costume was a long-sleeved shiny burgundy leotard with rhinestones all over, and the hat and cane were covered with the same fabric and rhinestones.

My mother had my solo costumes made by a costume designer in downtown Boston who was a former stripper. I remember she had all these pasties and fancy stripper costumes in her shop, as well as pictures of herself back in the day. She now was almost toothless, sat with her big belly hanging down between her legs, and spoke with a raspy smoker’s voice. I think she would even have a cigarette hanging out of her mouth when she was measuring me. It was a trip, and she was quite iconic among my dance peers.

The competition was held at a local Holiday Inn. I was very confident in my performance, and when I was announced as the first-place winner, I was ecstatic. However, my friend, who was an awesome dancer—better than me, I thought—had not been placed at all. She was also in the jazz category. After a bit of whispering by the judges and the teachers approaching them, they announced that she was also a tie for first place.

I was devastated! Even though I knew there was no way that she had not placed, I began to wonder if they had made a mistake by choosing me. I did not go to New York that year. In fact, I never competed again after that in a dance competition. I continued taking classes at the dancing school, but I was not competing.

I did enroll in a three-year dance-teacher certification program and completed it in my junior year of high school. My friends didn’t pass the final written exam (which was the easy part for me) to receive their certificates that year; they had