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< Back Ali's Story Ali speaks to Joan about her journey of being adopted. She talks about her mom and her sister and how they became a family. She speaks on how knowing a brief background of her biological family gives her some comfort. 00:00 / 03:28 Yeah so I was adopted when I was 1 year old I think at the time my mom was living with my sister in Hong Kong and the adoption agency had sent her photos of a few children so she sorta got to see them and she could pick which one she wanted which sounds really weird but those are just the children who are available for adoption at the time and she ended up choosing me who knows why but here I am and when everything was final she actually flew down to Vietnam to bring me home everything was pretty much facilitated through the embassy so she had a lot of help in bring me home and it wasn’t too strenuous just for herself she was actually able to meet my birth parents which is something that a lot of people don’t can't really say that their biological parents and their adoptive parents met in person and yeah she met my mom and dad and she tells me that my birth parents couldn’t keep me anymore because they didn’t have the funds to feed me and my mom was crying and my dad was just kind of there but just knowing that is really special because a lot of kids once again they don’t have that they don’t have that memory so my mom said that I have multiple siblings so I guess I was just the one kid that wasn’t able to be fed at the time so it's interesting to know that I have like other siblings out there and my mom also has a photo of me and my biological mom of just her carrying me which is kind of crazy cause I don't know my sister is also adopted from Vietnam just from the south and she doesn’t have any recollection of like anything from her history I think these little details definitely changed the way i feel about adoption in comparison with other adoptees cause many adoptees get left behind you know left at a door step something like they they don't have any memories but there biological parents can say they know and my sister she's also adopted like I said and she was given up right after birth so she doesn't know anything about who her family is or how many siblings she had or anything like that and I think the fact that my family tried to take care of me for like a year was sort of reassuring that I was cared for its something that I am grateful for and other adoptees can't say that they have that same experience and they live their life not knowing what their birth parents truly thought of them which can very it can be stressful and impact their life so just knowing I was cared for was really important for me

< 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 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.

< Back Aidan's Story Aidan talks about his family heritage and some of their memories. During this interview Aidan shares about his tattoos and their significance to his family, life and goals. 00:00 / 05:00 So, my dad is from Ireland and my mom's parents are from Ireland, so most of my extended family, close family, is still back in Ireland, I actually got that flag when I was in Ireland myself, it just reminds me of my family, and I am very close with my family. So, tell me about your family, who's in your family? I have one younger brother his name is Patrick; I also have a younger sister named Orla and an older sister named Emma. We all have Irish names in the sense besides my older sister Emma, Emma is not really an Irish name, I think its German if I am correct. But my older sister is named, my mom used to go to Ireland almost every summer, and my older sister was named after one of my mom's childhood friends who was in Ireland, they were very close but unfortunately my mom's friend Emma passed away from childhood cancer, so my mom wanted to name my older sister after her to honor her. I know you have more than one tattoo, tell me about them! So, my first one I ever got was actually for my grandfather, I didn't think I would ever get a tattoo, but it just so happened that was the first one which it's his birthday and I got it on his birthday about 10 years after he passed. His birthday, which I find interesting is 12/34/1934 and that always seemed very cool to me. But the reason I got it was because my grandfather and I were very close, he was and still is one of my biggest role models growing up, it's kinda just the little things that he would do that always stuck with me. I always think about it from time to time. This one time I fell asleep in the living room of his house, and I could hear him coming down the hall and I thought he heard me being up late at night and I thought he would get mad or something, so I just pretended to be asleep. And he came over with a blanket and he tucked me in because he saw me without a blanket and it was just those acts of caring, compassion they just always stuck with me, you know. He always took such great care of me that I kinda wanna do the same for him, when I'm back home, not at school, I try to go take care of him at his grave. It's on my left arm, which when I put my arms down its first thing touching where my heart is, so he is always with my heart in that sense. So, tell me about some of the others, do they also relate to your family? Ya so I have coordinates that go back to Ireland, to a family home in Ireland, actually where my grandfather was born. One of the relatively new one is a pocket watch. The reason why I got a pocket watch was originally for my father, when my dad grew up it was a thing down the family line of them passing down a pocket watch from son to son. When my grandfather passed away and my dad went to Ireland, he could never find the pocket watch. So, for Christmas 2 years ago we actually got him one. Seeing my father tear up, from this pocket watch, I saw how much it meant to him so that’s where I got the idea, and I was like okay that’s what I'm going to get him. So, when I went to go get it, I had the opportunity to set the time, I wanted something directly for my mom as well, so I set the time on the clock for the time my mom was born. It was also around the time I finished my associate degree, so it had a symbol of new time, new beginnings, new chapters. The reason I got the map wasn’t for a family member, it was really for myself because I always had a love for maps and globes, it felt like the right fit for me. I always had a globe when I was growing up and I loved looking at it I eventually lost it at some point or it broke and now I actually have my grandfather's one because my mom was going through his stuff and she found it and gave it to me which was very nice and I try to take care of it now. I also have another one that I recently got, it’s a molecule for insulin, because my little brother has type 1 diabetes. That was very difficult for him because he was 16 at the time and that just changes your whole life. I wanted him to know even though I don't have it, we are in it together, I will always be here for you, if you ever need help with it or need a ride to the doctors I'm here for you, he had so many needles poked at him I figured I could get a few myself. So that is why I got the molecule because that is the molecule that keeps him healthy.

< 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.