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< Back Charlie's Story, 2022 Charlie recounts his rich experience traveling the world, and what he has learned from a lifetime of travel. He discusses the importance of how traveling helps us experience and help better understand other cultures, and how the individuals of these cultures shape his experiences. 00:00 / 04:58 So to start out, I wanted to ask you to tell me about your travels throughout your life. Oh, totally I've been we've been very lucky with the chances to travel widely and a number of ways. We've traveled in Europe and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. And we traveled by boat and we travel by plane to some places that folks don't likely get to. So we've been very lucky. What what we started doing was bareboat chartering. And so we go down with friends and charter a boat for a week and poke around. And then we got to know some folks down there. And that led to a number of trips that took us to quiet little places that were very special. Yeah, what places did you end up visiting? Well, the some of the most interesting those days were in the Bahamas, which is not far from Florida. The Bahamas, or that's an earring because that a lifestyle is a very simple one and tied closely to the water. So people fish and people say, Oh, it's a much less complicated life.Each culture has its own defining food preferences, but so it becomes a question of which your pleasure artists are buried. So when you hurt Italy, I remember, we literally he took us out into the countryside of his place, and we'll probably had five or six courses. And in between each course, there was a different pasta dish. So oh, you could Oh, the pasta, trouble. And other cultures that fish can be defining, particularly in the islands where the fresher, fresh and wonderful. And and then of course, there's always the wind to wash it down with that makes that compliments of me also. It's all fun. Some of the places that we went to, as I say, we traveled around the world. And it's you, you realize when you travel that, wow, the architecture and the historic ask aspects are interesting. It's the people that make the difference. And so we'd always try and somehow connect with local folks wherever we were. And that made it especially nice. It was interesting because you can read forever about different cultures but until you talk to the people, while you're there isn't really illuminated and and so the people flesh out the sense you have the culture. So I know that it is it's clear that you've had a lot of time spent traveling and going throughout different places in the world. I definitely want to be able to travel more in my future and so I was curious if you had any advice for me for my future travels. The only advice I would give as a general advice that remember that traveling in my view is about the opportunity to meet people and focus on people lose much this the charm with the area and look food and all the reasons that it's appealing.

< Back Annabel's Story Annabel, who recently uprooted her life in North Carolina and moved to Northampton, MA, discusses how she ended up living in the city and her close familial relationships that led her there. 00:00 / 03:21 Stephanie: Speaking of Northampton, how did you even end up here? Like, how did you know this town? Because it is so small. Annabel: It is so small. I had been visiting here for a number of years because my daughter, who is a writer, and her husband is a publisher, they were living in Northampton and were - and Amherst and Northampton both have a huge community of writers. I ended up visiting frequently, and then 12 years ago, almost 13 years ago, they had a child who was born four months early. And she only weighed a pound and a half, and ended up having a lot of medical crises. She had a feeding tube and a trach. Stephanie: Oh, my God… Annabel: And, ended up spending four hundred and [sic] days in three different hospitals. Thank God she was in Massachusetts because she had some fabulous care here. Stephanie: Yeah. Annabel: She is doing really really well now. Um, and if you didn’t know, if you didn’t see the scar in her neck you wouldn’t know she had a trach. And, ironically, as a two year old, I had a trach… Stephanie: Oh… Annabel: Because of a really bad case of bronchial pneumonia, and ended up with a trach. So, we may be the only grandmother team… Stephanie: Yeah, that has… Annabel: that have the trach scars. Anyway, so I came up here a great deal while she was in the hospital - or, those 3 hospitals. And finally, I just thought, “I want to move there. I want to be near her,” so that was the reason I ended up here. And I’m so glad. I’m almost 75, and if you had told me I would make friends as good as any friends I’ve ever had I would not have believed it. So, I count my blessings that I ended up here. Stephanie: Yeah, that sounds really, that everything worked out, basically. Annabel: It did. It really did. Stephanie: Yeah. And was it hard making friends here? Annabel: I think at first, because I didn’t think that I could ever make friends like the ones I left behind, particularly back in North Carolina, I wasn’t reaching out. But finally, my daughter is best friends with another writer, whose mother moved here from California, and both of them kept saying “You’ll love each other if you get together!” and we instantly did. And then, I joined a church at the same time as another friend and we’ve become best friends. So I'm just amazed. I did not expect - I knew I would be happy here because of my daughter’s family. And there’s another family, they’re very close to me and I love them. I didn’t think I’d have peers as friends, but I do, and I’m so glad. Yeah.

< Back Carol's Story Carol talks about her experience traveling to Europe her junior year of college after realizing that she needs to go out of her comfort zone. With support from her friend and her parents, this trip changes her perspective on the kind of person she wants to strive to be, for her career but mostly for herself. The European mindset is what influences her to do things that make herself feel whole like slowing down her day with journaling and yoga. This trip has inspired her to travel for nursing and even ignite the courage to solo trip alone someday. 00:00 / 03:22 Interviewer: Can you tell me about an experience that influenced your life a lot that you felt that you learned something? Carol: I went a trip abroad last year during the spring and before going on a trip abroad I never thought I could do anything like that just because I'm a homebody, I like my own friends and family. And it was a fall semester of my junior year. I realized that I really needed to go out of my comfort zone in order to grow just because I've been so used to being surrounded by my friends and not really branching out. So I decided mid fall to go and before that I was absolutely not going anywhere. I was just going to stay at UMass Amherst and something came over me. One of my friends said to me, you will never be this young and be able to travel the world again and I decided that I really should be able to do that and if I have the opportunity to I would be stupid not to take it. I got on my flight to Barcelona, it was January 11th, and I was so nervous. I remember the week before that, I was crying to my mom and dad. They just kept saying, you are going to have the time of your life. When you come back, you are gonna be a changed person. And I was just like, oh my God, they're not being serious. Like, I'm not gonna be a changed person. But they were right. I was with my two friends, which I know it's not really out of my comfort zone, but it's the best I could get. And we went to 11 different countries and we just traveled the world together and experienced all these different cultures, new friends, and the lifestyle there is quite different than here. It's really relaxed and laid back. There was a saying that I read that people here work to live, but in Europe, people live to work. I think that is so true. When I was there, people were on the street at 12pm, people would be out drinking coffee, enjoying their time with their friends and family. And here, you never really see anybody drinking coffee. They're mostly running to work, getting coffee for work or running back to work. And I really realized that I need to enjoy my life and I don't need to constantly be working, constantly be doing something that leads to work. I need to enjoy it. And these experiences are really what shaped me to who I am. Work won't shape me to who I am. Only the experiences do. So when I came back from abroad, I really decided to live my life and look at my life in a different perspective. I decided to do new things every day that I enjoyed. I tried to put more time for myself into my day-to-day life. And before that, I was just working, constantly doing homework, constantly doing something that will help my future. Even now, I still obviously do that, but now I do more things for myself. Like I meditate each morning. I go to yoga, I journal. And I realized that definitely helped me a lot to become a happier person, just because I saved more time for myself. And I also have gotten more out of my comfort zone. Like now I wanna do a trip alone. I also am going to travel nursing. So I would love to travel alone and work in a different hospital all by myself. I think exposing myself to a different culture and exposing myself to a different country all alone has definitely helped me get out of my comfort zone and try new things.

< Back Camille's Story Camille details her relationship with her siblings and the importance that they play in her life and how they have helped her get through her toughest challenges. 00:00 / 04:23 Growing up I went through a lot within my family, through so much of it I felt this large sense of loneliness and this feeling of having to do everything myself and always being alone. But then I realized I have the three most important people in my life standing right next to me the whole time. I have three siblings, who are very close to me in age. My oldest sister's name is Bella, she is currently 23 and she lives in the UK. My youngest sister's name is Josie, she is 20 and she is a sophomore here at UMass Amherst. Then I have a younger brother who is 17, he is a senior in high school. I think having siblings in my life has totally transformed who I am as a person. I think they are the best part of my life. Our parents got divorced which felt like my whole childhood, it felt like this ongoing struggle and battle in my life. So many times, I tried to shield my siblings from it, even though I wasn't the oldest child it always felt like my role in life for some reason. I spent so much time just fighting against things that were just expected to happen, that I feel like I almost lost a part of myself, and it made me have this overwhelming sense of loneliness. I think that has really impacted who I am as a person, and I also think it has led me to be the person I am and to always feel the need to help others or to empathize with other people. Interviewer: “I just so love hearing you talk about your siblings and your relationship with them and somehow there has to be natural sibling rivalry, but you guys do not let that get in the way.” Sibling rivalry thing, I don't know if this is a common theme of siblings but for us it was a lot worse when we were children. I felt like we were all on an equal playing field. I feel like as I have grown up, one of the reasons I first told myself I wouldn't be a doctor was because my older sister is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life. I will commend her for that till the day she dies, she is one of my biggest inspirations in my life, and I feel like the reason why I try too hard to be a better person all around and better at school and better opportunity to connect with people is because of the way my older sister conducts herself. She is like that one person I will always reach out to for advice, we still have our daily phone calls. There was never a said rivalry between us, but I think her being so smart has always not necessarily weighed on me, but it has always been that factor that she is so smart, how can I be so smart… But I think over time I realized that there could be a million smart people in the world. And I think that's one of the reasons me and my siblings get along so well is because I think we each bring our own thing to the table. Even Thanksgiving dinner if we are not all there, something is missing. Separately we each have our own personality, our own ball of energy. As though they're so different from each other, I also feel like they're so similar. People always tell us “Have you guys realized you have the same exact mannerisms?” Like I guess we make the same motions with our hands when we speak. Every time I am with one of my siblings it is like wow you guys are identical. It's funny because I have red hair, my older sister has brunette hair, and my younger sister has blonde hair, so we are not identical in any way shape or form. But sometimes people really can't tell us apart from our mannerisms and the things we say. I think that is so true for us because even though I get to see my older sister two/three times a year now. I still am adapting to things she says, her mannerisms. My younger sister is adapting to both of ours and I just think it's so funny to watch us interact. Even if I do not get to talk to my siblings every day, they are still the biggest part of my life, and it shows in so many more ways than one. They are one thing in my life that makes me feel like it's possible to beat loneliness. Because I remember at any point in my life, even in high school, my loneliest moments, the moments when I was the saddest, like when your first boyfriend breaks up with you, I remember the first thing I think about is always like at least I always have them. They will never leave me. That really means more than the world, is that I can make the biggest mistake and no matter what I do in my life I will always have them. It is the best feeling.

< Back Catherine's Story Catherine Grella (21) talks with a friend, Susan Martins (77) about her close relationship with her two sisters, her childhood, and the family dynamics that have shaped her into the woman that she is today. 00:00 / 04:51 The order of the siblings is that Abby is the firstborn. She is about two and a half years older than me, and then I am next. And then Sophia is my younger sister, and then my younger brother is Ben. Sofia is about two and a half years younger than me, too. So the spacing between us is like, pretty equal, which is good because it's so we've met us so close, and he's the only boy. Sophie and I did gymnastics together. I remember I told you about that. And sometimes we trained so hard at such a young age. We were so fascinated by gymnastics that we would go probably 13 to 15 hours a week. And when you're like nine or ten, that's a lot of commitment. Like, think a young gymnast body going 13 to 15 hours a week in training and running and doing strength and conditioning. And it built our bodies to be very strong, which is something I'm thankful for. But in a way, it took away part of our childhood because we didn't get to see friends as much. And we really became so close, and we became each other's best friends because of all that time we would spend in the gym together. But the one thing that I wanted to say was that when Sophie and I were younger, although we would go to gymnastics super late into the night, I think it was like we'd be getting out around 845, so we wouldn't be getting home until nine. And my whole entire family would wake up at 09:00 so that we could have family dinner every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My poor father must have been so hungry by 09:00 Wednesday, Friday. But they did it because they loved us, and they did it because they thought that that was important for us to eat together. I'm really happy that they did that. And in so many of the ways that they made these accommodations in my life growing up, are ways that I want to incorporate into my own family when I have it, because they're really special. If you were to leave this interview for someone like, who would you leave it for? I would definitely leave this for my parents and just in honor of them and all they've done, in away, my mom and my dad always wanted to give us the things that they didn't have growing up. So my dad, when he was 40, he had to take up music lessons all by himself and learn how to play the guitar and learn how to play the piano. And he's so fantastic at it. He has that creative brain where he can hear a song on the radio and just play the chords on the piano. And it's so amazing. But that was all taught to him by himself. And he just thinks, how good could I have been if I was given this when I was young? So that was the philosophy he adopted when he enrolled us on piano lessons when we were in kindergarten, and they just never wanted to have any doubts of what our abilities could have been if we weren't given those tools. And I'm so thankful for that because I don't thank them enough, and I really, really should, but I should just sit down one day and say, thank you for always giving us all of the tools that you wanted us to have to be great in life and to find out what we loved. Even Sophie and Ben didn't stick with piano, but at least they were given that tool to explore. And the same thing with sports. I'm so thankful that there was never a sport that I brought up to my parents, and they turned it down and they said, no, you can't do soccer. You can't do this; you can't do that. They were always so willing to be accepting our interests and accommodate them in any way that they could and help us, and that was something so special. Of course, I leave this interview for my siblings too, for them to know all the ways that they impacted me in my life and will continue to impact me in my life. But a lot of it is for my parents too, because it's only when you get older that you really appreciate all of the ways to which they were such good parents. And at college, it's sad, but I think it's there were so many things about my childhood that I took for granted. And it's only when you're at college and you're not surrounded by your immediate family anymore that you realize the things that you miss.

< Back Barbara S' Story, 2022 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. 00:00 / 04:14

< Back 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. 00:00 / 03:46

< Back Candace's Story Candace shares what it means for her to live her best self and how she continues to learn through her experiences. 00:00 / 05:17 Candace: I like my own company. And I guess that was something of a surprise. I've tended my whole life to be very social. And all of a sudden, because I couldn't be, I started to do maybe more internal work, deeper dives internally. Being alone did not necessarily feel lonely to me. Candace: I'm 77. So with, I certainly hope, I've learned over that many years, a bunch of stuff. And, trying to get to the place where it's one thing or one more most important thing, or one thing that is a basket for everything else, right. And I think what it comes down to for me, is that everything counts. And the older I get, the more I see it. It's not that you have to always make brilliant choices, you can't, you know, and in fact, I think our failures may be certainly as important, maybe even more important than our successes. The choice part comes about, when you see how you deal with events in your life, or how you deal with what comes at you, or how, what you use to make choices, or even things like who you choose to be your friends, or who whose shoulders do you choose to stand on, you know, I mean, we can't choose our family. And we certainly all stand on their shoulders at some point. But, but we do choose like, occupations and, and mentors and people we admire, those are the shoulders we stand on, and those choices feel important. Candace: And, as I've gotten older, one of the things that's been I've been so aware of is that choices that I made years ago, come back to me in ways that I never thought would be true. I don't believe that everything is fate. Or that necessarily everything happens for a good reason. Because some bad stuff happens, you know, but I do believe opportunity is put in front of us time after time after time. And that's what's laid out. And that, within that we make choices. And those choices, sometimes they're good choices. And sometimes they're like, “wow, that was a wrong choice”, in terms of how things have turned out, and “what am I going to do about that?” Are we going to be defeated by that? Am I going to be angry about that? Am I going to be a victim? Or am I gonna make something of it that turns it into a lesson of some kind? Candace: My purpose is to be my best self. And what do I mean by that? There's a poet who I like a lot named Mary Oliver. And the last line of one of her poems is, “I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.” So I think that's what I mean by being my best self. I want to live fully and passionately, and mindfully. In this present moment I want to find ways to be joyful and to share that joy with other people. I want to be a lifelong war learner. I want to love unconditionally, I want to hear people's stories and share those stories. I long to explore the outside world for sure. And to get back to traveling and that kind of thing. Also, from the pandemic. I've learned, I want to explore more inside. What's going on inside. And I think a new exploration place for me right now is I want to prepare myself and the people around me for my death, so that it can be, I hesitate to say good because I'm not sure that that's always the case. But that it can be fully experienced and then it can be okay.

< Back Bert's Story, Spring 2022 Roberta Liebman shares with Alisson Aleman the remarkable role that neighborhood organizations have played in some of the most significant moments of her life. They have provided her and her family with support and companionship through some of the most challenging moments. 00:00 / 04:15 I think my story began about fifteen years ago, my son and his wife who lived in California, they both by a bizarre coincidence were diagnosed with brain tumors. They were different types but they were serious. And my son Jamie recognized that they were going to be in big trouble. They didn’t have a lot of resources to help them and they were both needing brain surgery. So Jamie spoke to some friends and said we’re gonna need help and the friends said, okay, we’ll do it. And they made sure that whenever food was needed, whenever a ride was needed to the doctor someone was there to help them. Someone was even there to help them sort through the pile of mail. And all of that was incredibly helpful to a family that was in terrible shape. It was this neighborhood that took care of them. When it was over, we were struck by how extraordinary it was that people just rallied around to help and lend support. And about that time, some of our neighbors began saying you know we can have an organization and we would help eachother, are you interested? And we had just had this extraordinary demonstration of how effective it could be so we said of course, yes we would. And my husband Ernie was on the board and he helped deal with some of the finances. I helped with a number of volunteer things, I had been a volunteer in many other situations and it was beautiful. And then the organization grew, people began really recognizing what a fine thing this was. Unfortunately, Ernie’s health was not great and our house was not safe so we had to move. We moved here to Northampton, our son and daughter in-law made us comfortable, they were living upstairs. But people here began saying you know have you heard of this village-to-village network maybe we should have something like Northampton Neighbors. Well, we had already seen this was a really good idea. So, of course we said yes. And we both prepared to be volunteers, except Ernie wasn’t doing very well and I fell down. I had to say I need some help. My arm is broken, I can’t drive to therapy. And boom, Northampton Neighbors was there and it turned out to be the nicest possible way to meet people in my community as well as to receive the help I desperately needed. I think it’s very easy to offer help, it’s really fun to be a volunteer. The thing that's hard are to learn to accept is to ask for help, we’re expected to be independent and to take care of ourselves. And to recognize that it is okay to say I need help. You know there is a certain level of isolation that older people experience, and making it possible for people to join a group where there all kind of social activities, there’s physical activities, there’s even a group called, I think it’s called FIG for food information group. But, I think it broadens the whole sense of how we all work together and how we all need each other.

< Back Bert's Story, Fall 2022 Bert speaks about her life journey and how not everything went as she planned. She talks about her adventures with her husband and kids and how she found her way to her career as a Speech Language Pathologist and how that career changed her view on life. 00:00 / 03:33 It seems to me that lots of people have kind of a plan in their life of what they would like to do, and they set about doing it. I never had such a plan. I was kind of a vague wanderer among libraries and was really interested in English literature and English history and studied for a bit in England for a little while and I didn’t have a glamour of what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed like it would be good to be useful, but I didn’t have much other plan than that. I got married shortly after college and we had a child and then because I had been an only child pretty much in my life, I thought we don’t want this child to be all alone we should have another one pretty soon. And it turned out that that one turned out to be twins. And suddenly wooo, I had three babies, they were less than two years of age, and I was supposed to figure out what to do with them and I had to stop wandering around wondering what book I was gonna read next. So, it was a pretty hectic and transformative time for me. I had to think of myself as a very different person, responsible for these three little babies and then three wild little boys and I started to sort of become somewhat more assertive I think. I had never been before. After being at home for quite some time with them I thought I really gotta get out of here a little bit and I saw a notice that Children’s Hospital School for Kids with Hearing Loss was looking for some volunteers and I thought well I could probably do that. And I arranged for a baysitter and went down and helped out mainly in an art class with kids with severe hearing losses and they were very interesting. But the director of the program kept saying you gotta go to graduate school. And so after a year of so of prompting I did start a graduate program in speech language at Catholic University. A friend from graduate school who was a little bit ahead of me called and said Bert I’m working at this great school you’ve gotta come and work here with me. It’s a school for preschool children, very young children, with a variety of pretty serious physical and neurological problems and they need another therapist. Okay, here I am. It turned out to be wonderful. The schools had a wonderful transdisciplinary approach so that instead of passing kids around from therapist to therapist or teacher to teacher or whatever, we were in teams. The parents, teachers, physical therapists, the occupational therapist, speech language therapist, we were in a team and we all had to understand what everybody else’s goals were for this child so that anytime you interacted with them whether you were changing a diaper or you were helping somebody have lunch, or you were playing together all of those goals had to be integrated. It was an incredible learning experience and it taught me way more than any course ever could ever have taught me. I never imagined so many interesting, challenging situations just kept unfolding one after another and with the enormous good fortune of always having very good people to work with, not a lot of money but a lot of really good, strong coworkers. I feel very fortunate in my unplanned, kind of wandering way.

< Back Chad's Story Chad discusses his struggles in elementary school with learning disabilities and how it led him to the development of Sudbury Valley Schools and to the career path of community development. Chad talks about how important being a part of a community is, and how important it is to feel heard and respected in a group. 00:00 / 02:58 The first question that I have for you is: What was the most difficult part of school for you? You know again there was no special ed then, saying from the front of the room “Ok Chad what’s the answer to number 2? What’s two times nineteen” and I would get red in the face and now, all the other kids are whipping their heads around looking at me, so it was the kids too so. The hardest part was, I guess you would call it sticking out or the change, the change from fitting in and community, to sticking out as there’s something different here, what’s going on. You know, I was called lazy and a lot of those kinds of things until around 13 years old or something, when they diagnosed a bunch of learning disabilities. You know, it’s like any health diagnosis, somebody could take the diagnosis, let’s say alcoholism, they could take that and say “Oh my god I’m broken! This is never going to get better.” Other can take that diagnosis “Hey, now I know I need to watch out for this, how can I work on that.” So as soon as the mind makes that turn, that change, there is benefit. So, by the time I hit high school I had dropped out so, joining that new school in Framingham was the best thing that could have ever happened. I was accepted for who I was no matter what that small part of me was about. I was kind of, I guess you could call it sitting at the boundary. I was neither at the public high school nor at the prep school, but once I started that new school with the others, I was back in the arms of the community. I mean the Sudbury Valley School prepared me for being a member, you know, being someone who had something to give. “We want to hear from you, what’s your take on this, now what about yours.” And I think being a member of that warming school, and the specific model of the school formed a lot of the rest of my life.

< Back Caleigh's Story Caleigh reflects on the importance of becoming a role model for her five-year-old niece, Natalie. Being there for her as she grows up is something extremely important to Caleigh. 00:00 / 02:37 Caleigh: I just love stories in general anyways because it makes people who maybe would have never interacted realize their shared humanities. I just want say a story that I heard in class—It was a story in class about a young man who welcomed a little brother into his world, and he realized that this world was no longer about him and he wasn’t just a big brother, he was a role a model. Everything he accomplished and everything he strived for wasn’t only for himself but to set a good example for his brother. When I read that story in class it made me think of my five-year-old niece, Natalie, and we are very close. She’s my whole world, I love her so much. After reading that story, I took a step back and I was like, “who am I as an auntie and how does she see me?” She looks up to me, she mimics me, she wants to be just like me, she always wants to spend time with me, and it made me think about what kind of person do I want her looking up to? I am no longer just an auntie, but I am setting a good example for her. I want to show her that she is capable of anything she sets her mind to. I am the first one in my family to go to college and I would love to be a role model for her to see, you know, auntie goes to college, and I can do it and I want to be just like her. And through just reading that story of the man—the boy—who welcomed his brother in the world, it just connected me and him and we’ve never met. I hope that everything that I’ve learned in my 20 and a half years—today is my half birthday—I want to share those experiences with her so that she doesn’t make some of the mistakes that I’ve made, but also that she can follow in my footsteps because I feel like I am a great role model for her. That’s—you know—I have two older brothers. I never really had a female role model, other than my mom, someone that was closer to my age, so in a way we are so close, and I’ve been with her since she was in the womb.