here to give
stories from Maine
Photo taken by Grace Ellrodt with subject’s consent. (Permission given for this more identifying photo).
I sit on a well-loved couch, soaking in the heat of a wood stove and a distinct sense of home.
A 78-year-old woman with a beautiful shock of blue hair, born in Brazil, tells me how she came to call this small town outside of Lewiston her home.
An emotionally volatile childhood has radically shaped who she is, and therefore how she connects with her community.
Her community activism is an organic outgrowth of her personality. But it is also a source of social identity and purpose.
It is by bringing a voice to others that she claims a voice of her own, against the silencing tide of ageism.
She had to find this voice after tragedy took her daughter from her. She wrote about her motivation to re-enter her community in a friend’s book. She mailed me a copy recently, and it was a privilege to read. Hear her speak to resilience:
In the face of loss, at risk of being a permanent outsider, she has adapted loneliness antidotes, and believes others of her generation can do the very same.
Her life experience directly counters the ageist belief that older adults are defined by decline and withdrawal.
She finds purposefulness, joy, and growth in a place older people are told they do not fit: college. After her daughter’s unexpected passing, she became adamant that she would earn her degree. At Maine state institutions, older adults can attend as undergraduates for free, making a would-be dream accessible.
She is not only a presence, but a fixture, in her college program. Not only as an older woman, but as a woman robbed of education in her youth, now completing her studies in a second language, her wisdom is admired by a younger generation.
She reaps intellectual and emotional reward, and shares it in her community.
In fact, her commitment to community has dictated her path through college. It does today.
As a Portuguese New Mainer, she has become especially involved in the immigrant community, a guide for the experience she lived.
Her religious community is another loneliness antidote, where she is both an organizer and a deep thinker.
Subject featured with a book she created recently as part of a trip to Mexico she took with other undergraduates pursuing coursework.
Photo taken by Grace Ellrodt with subject’s consent.
Most motivating her engAgement: an uncompromising belief that she is in control of her experience in older adulthood, just as she has been throughout her life course. She need only be curious.
Her life philosophy shone through in her response to my last question for her: what does ‘aging’ mean to you? This was one of the most fervent stances expressed in any interview I’ve conducted over the last year.