Associate MFT, yoga therapist, poet, coach

Cynthia was born in the mountains of Quito, Ecuador, where her parents were serving as missionaries. She lived in Ecuador until the age of 2, when her parents left the mission field and returned to the US to live secular lives in Nashville, Tennessee. When her parents divorced three years later, she and her two younger brothers moved with their mother to Princeton, New Jersey, where she spent her formative years. 

After some challenging experiences in Princeton during high school, she moved in with her father, first to Randolph, Vermont, and then to Northern California, where she graduated from the Athenian School. She went to college at UC Santa Cruz, and after several years of exploring and struggling to find a focus, she decided to follow her heart and became a theater major. She was invited to study at the National Theatre of Great Britain, where she trained with Anthony Hopkins, Peter Hall, and other British Theatre luminaries, securing her desire to pursue a career as a professional actress. She played many roles in college, including Abigail in “The Crucible,” Nerissa in “The Merchant of Venice,” and multiple characters in “ROAD” by Jim Cartwright. 

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she traveled to Europe, landing first in Paris, where she had a Eurail pass for a month and $300. She fell in love with being abroad and crafted a life that enabled her to stay a year and a half and travel extensively through the continent. During this time, she lived in a bookstore in Paris, traveled in Morrocco with two Dutch friends she met in Spain, was nearly abducted, got stranded in the Canary Islands after a failed attempt to sell timeshares, spent a night in a London detention center, spent two weeks on a deserted beach in Greece, learned to dive for sea anemones, gathered a colorful cast of characters, and landed in Amsterdam where she lived for six months. While in the Netherlands, she made a valiant effort to learn the language, sold paintings door-to-door in charming Dutch neighborhoods, made a small fortune, and kept traveling. She may have stayed but was asked to do a play in Los Angeles, so she left Europe and returned to the States with enough funds to bankroll her start as an actress. 

She spent the next seven years in Hollywood, pursuing her acting dreams. She was in a traveling Shakespearean company playing Juliet, Portia, Desdemona, Hermione, Ophelia, Lady DeWinter and a musketeer. She performed in multiple stage productions, notably the world premiere of “Speaking In Tongues” by Lynn Kaufman, a play about James Joyces' daughter Lucia, “Translations” by Brian Friel at the Celtic Arts Center (which won a Drama Desk Award), and many plays by Mark Borkowski, originating roles in “The Noisemakers,” “Suicide Inc,” “Lonely Vigil for a Stranger,” and “Playing with Shadows.”  

While in Los Angeles, she began writing songs, took up residence in Laurel Canyon near her childhood idol Joni Mitchell, formed a band, and began performing both as a solo artist and with the band “Love and Truth.” After a rough break-up with one of her bandmates, the band dissolved, and she impulsively took a friend up on the offer to work on Fire Island in New York for the summer. She stayed for seven years settling in Manhattan.

While in New York, she continued to pursue acting and music, making an album of a few selected songs and performing. She also produced, directed, and starred in the short film “Hard-Boiled Shiva,” which was selected for the New York Independent Film Festival. During the Screen Actors’ Guild strike, she decided to pursue another passion and became a certified yoga Instructor at the Kripalu Yoga Center. 

Cynthia’s career in yoga led her down a very different path, ultimately leading her to find her life partner, Ted Domalewski, at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. Ted and Cynthia split their time between Manhattan and the Hamptons, and within a year, Cynthia discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to their son Asher in 2002 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.   

When Asher was six months old, Cynthia’s brother, who was living in San Diego, offered Ted a new career path in real estate, so the small family packed up and moved. Influenced by her experience birthing Asher, who was born two weeks after his due date through enforced induced labor, Cynthia continued to teach yoga and became certified as a labor support doula, specializing in working with women seeking an unmedicated birth, as she had done with her son. She attended many live births with women, midwives, and doctors while teaching pre-natal yoga and finding her way as a new mother. 

When Cynthia was pregnant again four years later, she planned to give birth at home in a portable hot tub set up in the living room. However, she went into precipitous labor while home alone on a warm September afternoon when Ted had gone to Ikea to get stain for the stairs. The labor only lasted a half hour, and she delivered her daughter Talie in her bathtub before the midwives and family had arrived.   

Ted and Cynthia were now supporting a small family of four, and the pressure of caring for two young children while maintaining a San Diego lifestyle began to take its toll. Ted began to lose his way. During his younger years, he had lived in Kripalu when it was an Ashram, where his basic needs were met. As a father and parent, he found it difficult to maintain his grounding and Cynthia took a full-time sales job to support the family while still nursing their daughter. It was challenging, but she was buoyed by the love of being a mother, which came naturally and easily. This lifestyle continued for several years, during which time Ted became more despondent and turned to alcohol to ease his distress. They decided to move back to the Hamptons, hoping to return to a place where he felt good. Ted went first to get established, with the plan that Cynthia and the children would follow after. However, it was on this trip in 2014 that he died in a hotel near Kripalu, where he and Cynthia met and had spent some of their best times together.   

Thus began Cynthia’s journey of grieving widow, single parent, and sole provider. These were painful days, and she found that she needed to become resourceful. She left her job doing sales for Deepak Chopra a month before Ted’s death because it required her to be in an office all day, and began a sales job with Tony Robbins, where she could work from home. She struggled to make ends meet, care for her eight and twelve-year-old children, who were also grieving the loss of their father, and make their lives full. She filled their large family home in Encinitas with renters and roommates to provide financial relief while she spent her days driving children, cooking meals, herding animals, and talking to people worldwide about their personal growth journey for Tony Robbins on her stationary desk treadmill.   

She began writing copious amounts of poetry to soothe the confusion and pain of Ted’s passing and the dramatic disruption in their family. As the children grew, she started to revisit the days when creativity drove her life and began to seek a path that would engage her interests and passions moving forward. She enrolled in a Master of Psychology program and, after a few stops and starts, is now interning as a marriage and family therapist, set to graduate in December 2024.