< Back Emily L's Story Emily discusses how her culture, once embarrassing to her, has helped her shape into the growing and caring person she is today. 00:00 / 02:35 Reflecting now, it's sad to say but I was definitely embarrassed at the time when I had to do all this or if my parents didn't understand or spoke to me in another language, like in public and I would have to translate it, I thought it was a little bit embarrassing– I don't know, I don't really want to talk, be different –I don't want to stand out in front of other people and so that was kind of like how I felt growing up. I did think resentment, I did a bit too just because I wish things were a little easier. I think that just because I had this role in my life it definitely made it a lot harder for me to be a kid and a student. I had to worry about making sure that my brother was taken care of as well in the school aspect of things, but now I'm just reflecting on it and I'm kind of grateful that they [my parents] didn't know how to speak English because now I know another language because of it and I don't mind helping them now. I'm so used to it that now I care for people a lot more deeply just because I've grown up to have to care for people, so I think its definitely made me grow as a person and mature in a way where it feels like, “oh this is not embarrassing or it wasn't embarrassing but more so I'm grateful” because I'm still connected to my roots and culture and I'm thankful that I know my language because when I go back to Malaysia I can connect with my family members there too so there's no disconnect really and even though I grew up here and they live across the world in a different society with different cultures, I still feel like I'm a part of the family too. Previous Next

Jonathan's Story Jonathan talks with Julia about the importance of his family network during the pandemic. Likewise, he is thankful for social media and zoom technology because it enabled him to stay in touch with his family. Scroll to Listen Jonathan's Story 00:00 / 03:46 Again the family network was very, very important. Your children, where are they currently living? Where are they living? Two of them are in Northampton Massachusetts, which is where I am now. Which explains one hundred percent why once we were both retired why we moved here. My daughter said cheerfully, I am quite happy to look after you when you are a Gaga but I am not driving up and down 91. And that seemed pretty reasonable. She's been, she's been wonderful. During the pandemic, you know before we all got vaccinated and all that, she would go shopping for us. We didn’t feel this way but we pretty much lived an isolated life in our house. And she wouldn’t let us go anywhere and it was wonderful. And she was very cheerful about it, never complained. That's a great relationship to have too, and very selfless of her. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean she's, all three of them are very very caring about these old folks that report to be their parents. Would you say, I know you mentioned that now looking back on it, during COVID you were isolated, but would you say that that isolation translated to feeling lonely or would you say on the contrary, being able to use zoom and connect with your brothers all over the country and also with your son in California and having your daughter around, would you say you actually still felt very connected? Yeah, I know that people who lived on their, who lived on their own, have had to cope with learning, there is no question about it. Which means both our sons, so child number one, child number three, are on their own, and different times it’s been very hard. We have a nephew too who lives in Ottawa and he’s on his own, he's talked about that. I think that for people who are partners and who get on with their spouses, some of course are partners but wish they weren’t, but we are not in that category. It's been, it's been much easier. I felt, right at the beginning of the pandemic when it was totally unexpected and we had no idea what was happening, I suppose I felt a little bit, alone. But, having a spouse, having children and grandchildren who didn't come into the house for months but we would walk up and down the street. You know, and chat with them. And having zoom and being a voracious reader, I don’t think that was an issue for me.

< Back Sally's Story This is the story of Sally's grandmother, a woman who continues to inspire her every day. She has played a vital role in Sally's life, raising her with care, guiding her path, and shaping who she is. Her unwavering dedication, deep compassion, and strength deserve to be recognized. Through her passion and perseverance, she has become not only a role model to Sally, but a symbol of selfless love and resilience. 00:00 / 04:30 Previous Next

Amy shares about moving from NYC to Philadelphia as a young girl. During this time, she learned some of the hard lessons about hatred and what it means to stand out. She also learned that some of her closets friends are the ones who have the most differences between them. Amy's Story Amy shares about moving from NYC to Philadelphia as a young girl. During this time, she learned some of the hard lessons about hatred and what it means to stand out. She also learned that some of her closets friends are the ones who have the most differences between them. Scroll to listen Amy's Story 00:00 / 03:46

Owen talks about his decision to go to college as a way to avoid the Vietnam War. He talks about how this experience exposed him to a whole new demographic of people and allowed him to see people for who they were as opposed to the stereotypes they had been socialized to believe. Education served as a bridge across cultures, creating the ability to connect with people of all backgrounds. Owen's Story Owen talks about his decision to go to college as a way to avoid the Vietnam War. He talks about how this experience exposed him to a whole new demographic of people and allowed him to see people for who they were as opposed to the stereotypes they had been socialized to believe. Education served as a bridge across cultures, creating the ability to connect with people of all backgrounds. Owen's Story 00:00 / 03:11 When I was 19, approximately, there was something going on called the Vietnam war, and you probably studied it in ancient history or something like that. But for those of us who didn’t really want get out there and get shot at, we had to find eats to not do that. And we also didn’t really believe that war was necessary. So I was part of a group of people, there are many, many of us, who said, no, this is not a good idea. And the only way I could stay out was to go to college. And so I went to college. And another thing that’s big in my life is when I went into college I was meeting different people from different parts of the world and more so different parts of the country. But I did meet a few people from outside the US. And some people have big influences on you. Some people have small influences on you, and some people you just don’t understand. And part of the non-understanding is you have to learn to accept people as they are. I would say the majority of kids that I was in classes with were white, from middle-class suburban cities around middle-class suburbs, from large cities around the country. I went to school in St. Louis, and I came from a suburb of Washington DC. but there were so many people from so many other places that were similar to me. And then I got to meet people who were different than me. I remember one young woman came from Hawaii, and she was native Hawaiian, and that was cool. I mean, I’d never met anybody from Hawaii before. And one day it snowed and she ran outside, and she just went absolutely beserk running between the snowflakes because she had read about it, she’d seen it in movies, but she had never experienced snow before. And i’m going, okay, this is cool. You know, I’m just trying to understand somebody’s frame of mind, especially when you grow up with snow. You know it’s like, what’s just snow? It’s like, no, this was like a life-altering event for her. And I said, okay, that’s cool. You know, you don’t, it’s to be able to do that and not to judge somebody based on things like that. And I grew up in a society where a lot of people were not accepted as they were. A lot of minorities were looked down upon and legally discriminated against. And, you know, that sort of has gone away, but not entirely. There was no such thing as people who were openly gay. That just didn’t happen during that period of time. People did not date interracially. You never saw, you know, a white woman with a black guy. I mean it just didn’t happen. So when you start meeting people that are different and meeting people a little outside of your realm of experience, you learn about them and you learn to accept them. And that was a huge thing for me, to transition from living with stereotypes, which were reinforced by things like tv shows, to getting to know people and understanding who the people were. And you know, understanding a person as a person, not just put into a category, a stereotype. Part of going to school was that piece of education. Previous Next

< Back Holly's Story 00:00 / 03:38 When I went to college, I had to pay for my own education. So, I worked full time all through undergraduate school, and I was very fortunate to work in an experimental program that was trying to salvage the life of kids in a low-income African American ghetto in Washington, DC. And I loved what I was doing, so I just went to social work school at Columbia. And so, then I was a social worker for twenty-eight years. Mostly, I, I'd always wanted to live in New Orleans. And when I finished social work school, I moved to New Orleans. And I worked in, I have a very strong belief in the power of different professions working together. So, I tried to do interdisciplinary things with law and medicine, and I started public interest law firms. So, I did that kind of thing until I was asked to go to Boston University and teach in the social work school. And they wanted me to be part of beginning to develop international perspectives in social work. And as part of that, I went on a faculty exchange to Cuba, and Cuba fascinated me so much that I stopped doing social work, and I just was spending all my time reading about Cuba and getting to know the people in Latin American studies at in Boston and the different universities. They have a collective there. And so, they all started saying, you need to go back and get a PhD in Latin American studies. So, in my forties, I went back to the University of Miami, and I got a PhD in international studies, with a focus on Latin America. And so, I went from being a social worker to being a professor of Latin American studies, But I needed, for family reasons, to be in Miami, and no one was ever gonna hire me to teach Cuban studies in Miami because there are 2,000 Cubans who are better qualified. And so, I thought, you know, they'll hire me to be the librarian for Latin American studies maybe. And there was a postdoc in Latin American librarianship at Duke University. So, I did that one year, and then sure enough, they hired me in Miami to be the Latin American studies librarian. So, I really had three careers. First as a social worker, then as a professor of Latin American studies, and then as a librarian in Latin American studies. And then I retired. But somehow, there's just something in me that that if if all of us aren't protected, if all of us aren't somehow safe and having a way to develop, if if you're having to just put all your energy into survival and you have no support and encouragement, then that's what produces dysfunction, personal dysfunction and societal dysfunction. And I sort of have always seen a connection between individual difficulty and group difficulty and societal difficulty, and I can't divorce myself from it. Previous Next

Barbara shares her story of becoming the owner of a bookstore, specializing in antique books. She shares memories from these years including her knowledge of books. Barbara S's Story Barbara shares her story of becoming the owner of a bookstore, specializing in antique books. She shares memories from these years including her knowledge of books. Scroll to listen Barbara S's Story 00:00 / 04:14

< Back Heidi's Story Kathy reflects on her journey to becoming a nurse practitioner, shaped by early aspirations to be a doctor and barriers such as her father’s belief that higher education wasn’t necessary for girls. Despite challenges, she pursued nursing, continued her education, and eventually entered a nurse practitioner program with encouragement from mentors. Her career focused on working with individuals with intellectual disabilities, where she found purpose in serving marginalized populations and navigating the complexities of real-world care. Looking back, she feels deeply fulfilled and proud of her path, valuing both the impact of her work and the personal growth it brought. 00:00 / 03:56 I've always danced. I never considered myself a dancer because I didn't take, you know, strict dance classes, all my life. However, wherever there was an opportunity to dance, I was there, including when we got our first TV, and I would look in the reflection, and I would dance in front of it. And I had tap shoes, and we had this tile space in front of the fireplace, and so that's where I would go to tap. In high school, I took once a week, jazz and always participated in the talent shows. I was always on stage. And when I listen to music, I love music. I've loved musicals all my life and sometimes – and I still do – if I close my eyes, a whole, you know, performance comes that I've never done in my body, but I've seen it in my imagination. After college, I took four hours of class a week even though I was working full time, and, you know, gravitated still to dance performances, other people who were dancers. I worked at Omega Institute in the Berkshires one summer, and they had, every day they had a dance class, and I was the dancer, and I had my own drummer. It was helping people feel okay and doing different movements across a huge floor. I really found a way of uniting my interest in communication, which I got my master's in, and movement. So through that, I connected with the beginning of the dance therapy community that is still around. It's a dance therapy association. And I, you know, became a registered dance movement therapist, and it's a blessing to meet other people who honor the body and movement in, in a professional way. And I found my groove, you know. I never, like, fit in with a straight speech therapist, and I actually liked working with the mystery kids because there was no right way and what wrong. So I used movement that was co-created between the child, or the other person's natural movements, and mine, to join it to create a common language, so that the verbal language didn't need to be the way of connection. Because a lot of people I worked with didn't have it. I was one of the first seven people to learn authentic movement, which now is a worldwide practice. And actually, dance movement therapy is part of the expression of arts therapy. But because the body is the most intimate, it's the hardest one for people to accept. You know, if you're doing a musical therapy, you have an instrument in the song. If you're doing art therapy, you have art materials. But movement is of the body, and our culture doesn't wanna deal with that. People think it's a no-brainer, you know, like, “Of course, dancing is therapeutic.” Yes, it is, however, if you really dance therapist, you learn why. It's not just like being dancing around and getting happy, which is great. I mean, I love to do that, but it's different. It's about connecting, communicating, and then creating. And again, it's more improvisational, and it's not a dance technique or movement technique. And, my love of movement and belief in the body, and that it was my intention to make a connection through a language that didn't exist except in the body that would come from our relationship, from the movements. Previous Next

< Back Jonathan's Story, 2022 Jonathan Daube (Northampton, MA) speaks with Selena DeCosta (Easton/Amherst, MA) about his time spent teaching in Malawi and how it shaped his view of the world for the rest of his life. 00:00 / 02:34 I spent two years in Malawi. I think for me it was more valuable than graduate school. I learned an enormous amount. About the world, about myself, and when we got back, it was 1970. This country, the United States, was in considerable turmoil. And I found that my experience in Malawi helped me in ways I wasn’t even aware of. Helped me work with all kinds of students, especially African american. Because for two years I had been, my bosses had been, african american, well not american, african. It just came naturally to me to work with people of very different backgrounds. That was extraordinarily, extraordinarily helpful. So that's, that's how we got there and we went with one child and came back with two. Our daughter, the middle child, was born there. Do you look at the world differently now than you did at that age? I think I do. I understood, perhaps still understand, what real poverty is like. Beyond anything you could see, well I could see, in this country. I understood, and understand now, now that I am much older, what it is like to be in a situation where there just aren’t medical services the way we are accustomed to them. A town like Northampton with a population of about 30,000 would have in Malawi, would have less than one doctor for the whole town. So there would be all kinds of people who would have no access to medical help at all. I am more comfortable in situations that I have never been in before. I would now say, and I say it to my own children, that to be fully educated and you know somewhat understand the world we live in, you have to spend some time, and I don’t mean just a week or two, you have to spend some time in a different culture. Now the different culture could be a very different kind of family or set up down the road, it doesn’t have to be overseas, but normally it would be. Previous Next

Janet gives voice to her late older brother Jay and recalls the significant impact he has had on her early life and professional career despite struggling in his adolescence and growing up in a time where it was unlawful to be self assured about your homosexuality. This is a story about love and loss but touching upon hope in freedom of self expression in culture today. Janet's Story Janet gives voice to her late older brother Jay and recalls the significant impact he has had on her early life and professional career despite struggling in his adolescence and growing up in a time where it was unlawful to be self assured about your homosexuality. This is a story about love and loss but touching upon hope in freedom of self expression in culture today. Janet's Story 00:00 / 03:57 I was born in 1943. Yes, I'm going to be 80 years old. A middle child and a working class post World War II family near Flushing, New York. My older brother named after my Father William Henry Ruloff Nelson Jr was a quiet, deeply sensitive and highly intelligent boy. During those years the 1940s and the 1950s baseball. Mom's at home waiting to put supper on the table for their working husbands was part of the American dream and I lived in a little area in Queens where people's families were very very much devoted to fulfilling that post World War II American Dream. My Brother Jay as we called him did not fit in. He wrote poetry, read deeply and spent a great deal of time alone. Even as a very girl I knew Jay, four years older was different. As he and I grew to adolescence he began to be teased by the other boys on the Block. As we played baseball, Jay kind of withdrew into his room quietly. In his early teens I knew there was trouble my parents talking behind closed doors. Those were years when words like homosexuality were never spoken out loud it was illegal and immoral. With all that he was struggling with as an adolescent, Jay had time and made time but to always be my big brother. In a family overwhelmed by illness, financial issues, and emotional stress, he introduced me to poetry and to literature. As he grew, his friendships of bright enthusiastic gay boys I became a focus of their energy. Surrounded by them I went to my first opera. When my brother moved out when I was 16, his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan became my second home arrested from my own. His life was not easy despite his high intelligence and a full scholarship to Princeton University, he dropped out of college unable to reconcile the emotional stress that marked those years. My course was different. At each juncture of my growing professional life, it was my brother who championed my success and kept me motivated when I questioned my own abilities. My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to him. In 1982, Jay showed the early signs of AIDS. The years ahead were marked with anxiety and fear. We talked honestly and after 4 years we knew he was dying. I saw him 36 hours before he died at the age of 46. I read a favorite poem of his, Edna St. Vincent Millay at my younger son's wedding. A piece of it is “love in the open hand, no thing but that; ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt.” Like my brother it's a poem about the freedom and the trappings of love. My son's daughter's middle name is Jay, named after him. Over these past decades, I've watched with amazement and joy at the changes in our culture. I often find myself smiling as I think about how Jay’s life would have been had he had such freedom and affirmation. Previous Next

< Back Candace D's Story Come listen to Candace’s story about her experience afinding her partner Gary and moving to Peru and living abroad. Through her story, Candace reflects on how living abroad allowed her to break free from her past and go on the adventure she had always wanted when she was little. 00:00 / 05:48 I was born in Princeton New Jersey in December of 1949. Unfortunately, I was born to very [inaudible] parents. As a child I always hoped that one day things would change. And then I remember very distinctly standing in my bedroom, I was 8 or 9, 10 years I old. I’m thinking, it’s not gonna change. It is just not going to change. But then I realized, cause I had older siblings who had left home. But one day it will, because I will leave home too and I cn change my life then. And that was, important for me. It was 1969, and I met this guy through my friend Terry. He had the kindest eyes, and he had a demeanor which a friend of mine in town here says he still has. He was very calm but he was just very caring and you felt like he was actually seeing you and hearing you. He originally had been from Long Island. His father had been in the schmatta trade, which means dressmaking trade if you don’t know the term, very New York term. And his Gary Drimmer. His parents had moved when he was eleven to Peru and he had gone to, finished up middle school gone to the equivalent of high school. In Spanish. By choice. Because he wanted to learn the foreign language. Well, we dated some, it wasn’t really serious but there was some connection and so when he left he said “I’ll write you,” and I thought right. At that point in my life I had learned that young men tend to lie a lot too. And they might mean to do things but they don’t always. So, we actually started writing and over the next three years we wrote letters, over a thousand of them. They were really the best way to get to know somebody. Because there was no interaction of you know sitting in the backseat of a car and what happens with that. So, it was more what was in your head. I mean he would talk about books he was reading. I would talk about issues I was having with my parents all the time which just was constant. I was really upset when he wrote me a letter that he was four years, four months younger and that he was Jewish. It was Jewish, didn’t bother me. The first boy I loved in fifth grade was Jewish. But you know it was like, “You were four months younger than me!” I felt like I was robbing the cradle. Which of course was hardly that. We continued to date each other during those 2 and a half of the three years until we decided okay, we got together he came back, up to the states and couple times and we got together then. Then we said, okay this is more serious than dating other people. Gary’s father writes, and there’s some, a lot of the letters are in there and asks, negotiates with Gary to come down to Peru to help him with the business he has, which is failing. Peru is a mess, it’s under a dictatorship and had been. And Gary negotiated, “Fine, but Candace has to come down with me and you can’t be saying anything about it.” Well, Gary’s parents were very very progressive, let me put it this way. They smoked pot with Gary in Peru, so that, I mean they’re dead no one can yell at them now. But I said “Oh my god! This is great!” So, we decided in late ‘71 I was gonna go down to Peru after I finished college in May at the University of Georgia. I got my first passport. I went to the library and got a bunch of books on Peru. Started reading about history. And I told my parents I was moving to Peru. Well, they couldn’t stop me I was 21, and turned 22 at the same, around the same time. So, in June of 1972, I left the United States with a passport in one hand and no idea what was gonna happen in the other. I mean, my father said, “You’re going to hell, and I won’t drive you to the airport”. My friends thought I was insane. “How do you know this guy?” “What do you know of this guy?” That kind of thing. But I felt I was doing the right thing. It was just like, the round peg into the round hole, I knew where I was, and this felt right. I got to Peru very early in the morning. After a long airline flight. Six months later we got married in a civil ceremony cause my parents refused to come to the religious one. And I was in the process of converting to Judaism with the only rabbi in the country. So, I learned, it was very lonely to be on your own, but I also learned that I am good at reaching out to people. And I learned to network with people. I would, if somebody invited me over for a cup of tea I might stay as long as they would let me stay in their house and pump their brain and try to get to know them. I really insinuated myself into people’s lives. I do remember things that I did, and it’s almost embarrassing but at the same time nobody ever said can’t you get out of my house, they understood, they all had been new at one point. So, I got to say I loved living abroad. It was the adventure that I had always wanted. I wanted adventure. I knew that. I also hated it at times. It was the biggest challenge. It grew me. It gave me the strength that I wasn’t raised with. It taught me I have more resources than I ever thought, and I loved ex-pats. Even the ones that I wouldn’t have spoken to for more than 5 minutes in the states. Because there was such a diversity of opinions, viewpoints, “lunch should be at 11:30, no 3 O’clock in the afternoon is early enough are you kidding?” I mean the world was just different. 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< Back Robert's Story, 2022 Robert talks to Honor about his experiences living in a commune and how it saved him from serving in the Vietnam war. He explains how his faith and trust in a higher power guided him to conquer this fear, and continues to support him to this day. 00:00 / 04:00 Previous Next