Casa Romero and the Milestones Program

“Casa Romero Renewal Center is a Catholic retreat center open to all, which continues to extend the Church’s long tradition of service to the spiritual needs of the urban poor, while being continually enriched through the people and cultures it serves.”

Casa Romero launched a brand new program this year for adolescent daughters and their mothers

(or grandmothers, or aunts, or godmothers or other female mentors): Milestones.

Milestones is a four-part retreat series that marks a “milestone” or point of transition in the lives of young women.

The idea of Milestones came from the success of one retreat that had been part of Casa Romero’s yearly program: "Celebrating the Quinceanera: Becoming a Woman of Faith." This retreat, celebrating the 15th birthday, is a special invitation for young women approaching their quinceaños celebration.  They join together with their mothers/fathers and/or madrinas (godmothers or female mentors) for a day of reflection, faith sharing, and celebrating tradition.

Three other milestones: 1) entering high school,

2) overcoming obstacles encountered in high school, and 3) graduating from high school, were identified by the staff at Casa Romero, and Dr. Lisa Calderone-Stewart was asked to design retreats to address the issues of those three points of transition. She developed the three milestones with these themes and insights:

Entering the Forest

• Audience: 8th grade daughters preparing to begin high school – and their mothers
• Short description of the theme: Entering high school is like entering the forest, since both of these environments have beautiful things to discover, as well as dangerous things which can harm us. Daughters want to climb trees, play with animals, run around and explore. Mothers worry because tree branches can break, animals can bite, there are holes you can fall into and large fallen branches you can trip on. If mothers and daughters stay close, then daughters can explore with some freedom, and mothers can be available to assist when needed. If they grow distant, daughters might find themselves in dangers they never expected and never worried about.
• Symbol: A plant
• Spiritual focus: The Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, who came together to support each other, as they began to enter the forest of a new chapter in their lives

Climbing the Mountain

• Audience: daughters in the midst of high school – and their mothers
• Short description of the theme: High school and life is full of mountains we must climb. Obstacles we must overcome. Challenges we must face. To climb  mountains, we need physical strength, which we can see, but we also need inner strength, which is invisible. Our strength comes from the example and the legacy of strong women who have climbed mountains for many generations before us.
• Symbol: A rose
• Spiritual focus: Stories of women who have had inner strength – saints, famous women, and women of Scripture such as the woman who challenged Jesus to cure her daughter by reminding him that even children get to eat the scraps that fall from the table.

Setting Sail

• Audience: daughters who are graduating high school – and their mothers
• Short description of the theme: Setting sail to go beyond is like launching from your home into the real world of college, employment, and adulthood. To sail, you need to pay attention to both the water current and direction of the wind. To live well as an adult, you need to pay attention to both hospitality/relationships and chores/work. Sometimes, we feel pressure to choose one over the other, but sometimes, we need to see some choices as “both/and” instead of “either/or.”
• Symbol: Anointing
• Spiritual Focus: Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha, who (1) used the assistance of Jesus to convince Martha that relationships are just as important as chores and (2) sat at the feet of Jesus (the traditional posture of a disciple) and anointed his feet as a foreshadowing of the washing of the feet at the Last Supper

For more information about Casa Romero and the Milestones program, contact Casa Romero: casaromero@wi.rr.com or visit their website: www.casaromerocenter.org

Casa Romero proudly serves the community at:

423 West Bruce Street

Milwaukee, WI  53204

Phone: 414-224-7564