Avia Ustanny, outlook writer 
Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer - Dr. Pauline Mullings
DR. PAULINE Mullings has received five serious proposals of marriage in her lifetime, but she turned them all down. This statement at the start of her profile serves to give you an instant glimpse of the kind of woman you are about to meet.
She is one, she says, who knows absolutely what she wants.
Pauline Mullings was, in her teens, a victim of what was often routine in many Jamaican homes the crushing of the growing ego.
Only allowed to do the Common Entrance Examination once, she failed, and was then shuttled off to Holy Trinity School, where, again she failed the Technical Entrance Examination, not once, but twice. She then set her hopes on going to high school by way of the Grade Nine Achievement Test, but failed on her first try.
She recalls, "I know by then that there was going to be nothing good in my life. I would be going down to Coronation Market with a basket on my head selling garlic, onion, escallion and thyme."
The thought grated.
Pauline was a fighter in more senses than one, and even one Holy Trinity teacher, who scoffed at her expressed desire to attend Excelsior, could not deny that she had clear abilities. Pauline Mullings was deputy head girl at Holy Trinity and also held the positions of house captain, president of the student council, dance leader, among other positions of responsibility.
No more chance
So, one day when she was told that she had one more chance to sit the Grade Nine Achievement Test, the young girl was beyond ecstasy and produced her best effort in studying yet. In a few months, she was dressed in a new uniform attending Excelsior High School.
Her fortunes had turned and something else had occurred too. Pauline recalls, "I went to Excelsior a changed person. I became converted."
Her uniforms were longer than other students and her hair was worn in a natural style. She soon became known as the 'Christian girl' by the entire school. She was never the kind of individual to hide her identity.
But, when, in 1975, she graduated from Excelsior High School, with only two O'Level subjects and those were Bible knowledge and cookery, she wanted to disappear from the earth's surface. The criticisms of her lack of achievements were sharp and cutting.
"How can someone send their child to school and they come out with that? Where is she going to go without mathematics and English?"
These were some of the negative statements made.
Self-doubt
It is no exaggeration to say that the dark days of self-doubt had returned. The counsellor explains that in her teens, she was more vulnerable to self-doubt than most because both her mother and father were not at home (her father, Clement Mullings, had died in the Kendall train crash of 1957, and mother, Mildrie Jones, migrated when she was 10 years old). Her three siblings had all been parcelled off to other relatives in the country. Sometimes, she said, she wished her mother had lied about her father. She would often sit in trees on the road leading to her home and imagine that men coming up the road would see her and declare themselves her dad.
There was a vacuum inside and a longing to succeed in order to bring all the loose ends of her life together.
She could have taken the easy route of many young females in a similar position, succumbed to some male admirer and settled down to have children.
But two things had happened to determine that she would not take this course. The first was that although her mother had migrated to Canada on a household helpers' programme and left her in the care of her Aunt Deloris, "a very kind woman" who would pretend that her mother was sending money and care packages, even when her mother was ill and could not. Her mother became ill 11 months after leaving and couldn't do what she went away to do help her children.
The second thing was that Pauline became a Christian at age 15. This, she says, more than anything else helped to her to fight back.
The truth be told, Pauline was always a fighter, and battling everyone on behalf of friends, family. Now she had to struggle on her own behalf and it was hard.
She remembers as clearly as if it were yesterday all the remarks made about her passes in BK and cooking. They were comments which wounded her and made her think twice about whether or not she could really achieve anything in this life.
But, encouragement from her pastor Carmen Stewart (custos of St. Andrew), her friend Rose Thompson and Aunt Deloris, meant that she was able to refocus on what she wanted to do, which was to teach. That meant going back to school and she did, attending evening school at Mico College even while teaching as a youth service worker at Holy Trinity.
Her aim was to get the subjects which
she needed for entry to the College of Arts, Sciences and Technology (CAST) (now the University of Technology). But the combination of work, school and church was too onerous.
Study time table
Pauline decided to do the subjects on her own. "I set up a study time table and studied at nights and got my subjects," she recalls. By age 17, she had passed all that was required and was accepted to pursue the teachers' diploma in technical education.
Rose Thompson, her close friend who knew Pauline since she was 17 recalls, "Dawn (her pet name for Pauline) had a lot of obstacles while going to CAST. There were nights when she came to my house in tears. We sat and talked and we would pray. She had a math problem, but she ended up doing so well that she ended up teaching her batch mates the subject.
"Pauline," she said, "was tenacious in her desire to achieve whatever she set her mind at. She is very determined, very ambitious and somebody who will sacrifice whatever it takes, if it means staying up all night to get an assignment done and going any distance to get research material. She will not eat. She will do whatever is necessary."
What Pauline remembers most of these early years is that it was the time when her mother proved her love for her. When she called her and said that she needed to go to school, but that there was no money, her mother instructed her to take out of her bank book, money that was being saved to buy a house. "Until this day, she has not bought a house. She was never able to save that money again."
Instead, Pauline, who recently completed her doctorate in Christian counselling, has transformed her life into the kind of existence that mothers would give their all to see. She was owner of her own home by age 24, a house in which her mother has spent numerous vacations.
Employed at Kingston High School (then Kingston Senior School) in 1980, she was assigned to the Technical Education Department where she discovered an aptitude for counselling. "In teaching a class I would spot students who were not doing their work, who were troubled or who were having some kind of problem. I would not only spot them, but I would feel compelled to investigate and do something about it."
Soon the word spread that there was a teacher whom students could talk to and long lines of students were to be found outside of her class every Monday morning, when students came to relate what had happened on the weekend and talk over their problems.
Wanting a way to develop a skill which she felt was God-given, she enrolled at Excelsior Community College pursued the certificate in guidance and counselling. Her principal of Kingston High School offered her the post of guidance counsellor, which had become vacant, an offer which she accepted, holding that post for 15 years.
In the ensuring years, she went on to complete a first degree in education at CAST. Between 1997 and 1999 she completed a master's degree and doctoral studies in Christian counselling at the Anderson Baptist Seminary in Camilla, Georgia, completing both with distinction.
Rose Thompson recalls, "I remember she did a course which was particularly tedious. It involved hours and hours of listening to tapes. She wanted to sleep, but she worked through the night until three and four in morning to get her A's. Dawn (Pauline Mullings) is very persistent and preserving."
Inspiration
Her friend claims, "She has inspired me. There was one course which she encouraged me to take. I did not feel that I had the time or the resources. She sent abroad for the course material, paying that cost just for me to take a start. She is like that. She inspires you to achieve." Pauline Mullings has a soft touch and her students and clients alike have come to know it."
Dawn Bonnick, 44-year-old mother of two who joined the HEART/NTA skills training class at 111 Windward Road comments, "Miss Mullings taught us housekeeping. From my point of view, I found her to be not just a teacher, but a counsellor, a friend, a sister and a aunt. No matter what she is doing, she leaves it and attends to you.
"She is the type of person, she has so many things to do, but she will give you even a minute of her time. She is always looking out for you especially the less fortunate, encouraging you to try again, no matter what."
Bonnick explains, "Because of my age I did not get through with the overseas (housekeeping) programme, I am waiting on another programme, which they say the age does not matter. I am working in the meantime at the Wilbert Stewart Basic School. Now I feel better in myself, much more than I used to. She helped to uplift me and now I can pick up the pieces and make it."
Acting Principal of Kingston High School, Charles Reid comments that Dr. Mullings' job "has to do with work experience (another appointment) chiefly, and that requires the placement of students in the field of work for three-week periods. In doing this, she has to interface with employers, workers at the work place and the students. From the point of view of this school, she is a very caring type, both for students, as well as other members of staff. She takes that care outside of school also. She does a lot of counselling where she serves as a caregiver to a lot of people in need, both in the school community and outside. If there is an illness or death in the family, she is one of the first who makes an effort to reach out to visit."
Praying
Dr. Mullings, he says, "is mad with you if something happens to you and you did not tell her, so she could pray for you; she is into prayer. As acting principal, I frequently ask her to pray. She is a prayer warrior and a hard working caring person who is interested in people and will do almost anything in her power to help people.
Dr. Pauline Mullings who now works as a counselling consultant in addition to managing the work experience programme at Kingston High School, also volunteers her counselling skills at several churches and schools in Kingston's inner cities.
"I live to give," she explains.
Marriage she says, has never happened because for every proposal which she got, God told her no.
He did instruct her, however, to visit the adoption board about six years ago, where unexplainably, she was interviewed on the same day and received her daughter in less than a month. She met Lori-Ann, she recalls, in her crib at Maxfield Park Children's Home, less than two weeks after her adoption board interview. The baby was covered with eczema, and at first she said no and made to return her to the crib. But the six- month-old child held on to her finger tightly and gave her a look, the mother now recalls, which said, 'don't leave me here'. It has been a match made in 'heaven' since. "Lori-Ann is my biggest achievement
apart from my commitment to God,"
Dr. Mullings states. Her own mother, Mildrie Jones, who resides in Toronto, Canada speaks in a passionate tone when she told Outlook, "She (Pauline) is a beautiful woman. I am so happy for what she has achieved in this world. She works hard and wherever she is right now is because of what she has done with her life. I am proud of her. She deserves her life."
According to this woman, who was visiting from abroad and staying at her daughter's home when we spoke to her, "from ever since she was a child growing up, you could tell what she would be. She studied hard. They would not take her in school at five because she was too young. Before she got into class, she already could read anything. When I take her to school, she was too advanced for the class, so they had to remove her and put her in a higher grade."
She cannot understand, she said, the problems that beset her from age 10 until she was 17, but she is glad that she came through, so to speak, without a scratch.
The woman lamented, "I going back home, but I love to be with her at all times."
Dr. Mullings explains, "Even though Mom went away, she has been a good mother. She has come out for my graduations and even though she is now retired, she still sends money for Christmas and my birthdays. Whenever we visit her she always pays Lori-Ann's fare, even though she is adopted. She is kind, helpful and supportive. She has taken up all my siblings, but I have remained here by choice."
By all standards, she has made all the right choices in life.
Counselling
She is dedicated to counselling and states that she has mastered the art of unloading the burden of others before she goes home every evening. She describes one case in which a young girl was raped by three men in her month, vaginally and anally. She was so traumatised that she resigned her job and refused to leave her home for days. She had walked into her office looking like an old woman.
Such cases, she said, are so painful that they could have sapped her energy in a short period of time, but she says, she has learnt to guard her own mental health in order to help others. Her track record includes several success with couples who have been reunited, and teens who have conquered drug addiction, promiscuity and indiscipline.
She wants one day, she says, to open a counselling centre and half-way house for women and children who must flee their homes to save their lives and their sanity. This is her next big dream. From everyone who has heard of it comes a vote of confidence.
But, no longer in need of human affirmation, she states, "All that I am and ever hope to be, I owe it all to Jesus." He, she believes, is her true father who arrived in her teens when she needed him most and has never left.
