We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cindy Pierce. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cindy below.
Cindy, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
Even though I was juggling a busy life, a group of friends bullied me into doing a solo show with stories about my life as an incident magnet. My first solo show, Finding the Doorbell, ended up selling out in my community, with 840 people in the audience who were grateful that someone else would tell on herself about s*x, relationships, birth, female pleasure, and stumbling into many awkward and hilarious situations along the way. This led to presentations for college and high school students and ultimately for parents and educators, covering topics such as healthy relationships, online influences and influencers, consent, screen time, and social media. This all began when my husband and I were innkeepers responsible for the cooking, hosting, serving, housekeeping, fixing, plowing, and managing every detail, and with three kids under seven. The response to my shows and presentations was positive enough to set me on this path. I have written three books and continue to perform and present. My most useful feature is courage. I don’t spend brain space wondering what people will think. I work on something and put it out there – the editing and growth of that project follows. It is quite liberating to go for it with my projects, parenting, and life. Two of the titles of my shows sum it up: Comfort in the Stumble and Glitchy Business.
Cindy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Whether it is my writing, the message of my work, presentations, or performances, I aim to inspire audience members to be kinder to themselves, to step into what they want to do, or to be themselves with conviction. People are often kind to others but not nearly kind enough to themselves. I share stories and examples that people can relate to with humor. When I present at schools, I often present to groups of students, educators, and parents. Teens and young adults report feeling more inspired to speak up and stretch their social courage after they hear me present. Adults tell me that they leave with more intention to speak their truth, try new things, and find more humor rather than shame in what life serves up. I often hear that I keep the bar low in a good way and provide a public service in my way of moving through the world, which is reflected in my presentations and stories.
Managing life as a spouse/partner, parent, employee/business owner, and friend is riddled with challenges and dilemmas. I remind people to do the best they can with what they have. However, we should aim to build a better quiver of resources to gain knowledge and guidance. Educating ourselves can bring more joy to all aspects of life. I also encourage adults to have clear boundaries and engage in deeper conversations with their kids. Proactive s*xuality education increases the chances for a child to have future healthy relationships and clear boundaries with partners. Investing early and often in conversations about s*xuality and screen time will be awkward and time-consuming but creates a stronger connection with our kids and students.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As the youngest child in a family of seven children with parents whose main goal was to instill resilience, I had a jumpstart on the courage to try things and dive in even if I am uncertain. I was a competitive athlete through college. I played soccer and ski raced at the University of New Hampshire. Our soccer team lost a lot in my early years. However, I was able to dig in and spread hope with my teammates. Ski racing is super humbling because you have less than 90 seconds to get through a course with a combination of factors that could set you back every millisecond of your two runs each race. It is almost comically humbling, but you get good at having your backside handed to you regularly. My adult life led me to become a ski coach, teacher, mom, innkeeper, author, presenter, and comic storyteller. When I speak and perform, I hold enough brain space to read cues to know what resonates. Once I have enough of them on board, I just go for it. Most of the time, it works. When it doesn’t, I learn and can laugh in the aftermath. One time, I got talked into doing some funny stories from my solo show for a group of employees being celebrated for working at a company for 25 years. It was a big company, so they didn’t know each other well. The planned stories were not going over well, so I had to shift to other stories to put them at ease. It was so painfully awkward. Five drunk people in the back loved it all, but most of the people were awkwardly listening, eyes wide. I learned how to choose more carefully and prepare the person who asks me to present, so we are sure it is a good match.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I feel like I have been pivoting my whole life in all of my endeavors and career experiences. I was a teacher for ten years. On my first day of teaching first grade, I went through my whole day of planned activities by 10:45 AM. I was a little too excited. Luckily, I had a mentor teaching next door who handed me something to do until lunch; then, we sat down for 13 minutes to create a game plan for the last four hours of the day. Right out of the blocks, pivot was the name of the game. Even as I grew into a seasoned teacher, kids are unpredictable. Each day was a string of pivots, and then I pivoted to staying home with kids once we had two kids. When we had three kids under five, my husband left his coaching job, and we bought my parents’ inn, P ierce’s Inn. We knowingly put ourselves in deep debt and a very challenging life of cleaning toilets, cooking food, directing teenagers in the kitchen on the nights of events, making beds, cleaning, plowing snow out of the driveway and parking lot, shoveling, and fixing the broken down inn while parenting three kids under five. This was a mega-pivot and such a grind that each year that passed made us reflect on how we had gotten on top of our game. Considering what was behind us, we were relatively dialed in. It was still a calamity on roller skates every single day, but there was enough joy and humor to keep us going. We are twenty-two years in and still not on top of our game, but we know how to pivot to considering the big picture many times a day.
Two years into this challenge, I told a few stories to a group of women friends who insisted I perform a show full of my life stories, which was a pivot that led to many more pivots – writing books, presenting to students, educators, and parents, and performing. My life is full of ongoing pivots. I dove into writing a show and educating myself about anti-racism during COVID-19. I also spent time writing a show about my mother, who had Alzheimer’s and died at 93. I played my mother in this show in the last six decades of her life, my time with her as my mom. Being drifty-over-fifty myself (a few head injuries, old, post-menopausal, and unmedicated for ADD), remembering 90 minutes of lines was a challenge. I created a system of following local roads in my mind, each road representing a scene and specific houses representing a paragraph. I am still learning and growing at almost sixty. When I have time between speaking and performing, I sew a quilt. I am not a skilled sewer, but I am game to cut up the material, sew it together in crooked lines, and create a beautiful albeit janky quilt for one of our kids. People ask me about retirement. Not on my radar. More pivots ahead.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cindy-pierce.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cindypspeaker/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cindy.pierce.5243/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-pierce-375ab8a9/
- Twitter: https://x.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FCindyPspeaker
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cindypierce7419
Image Credits
Geoff Hansen
Britton Mann Photography