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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

< Back Mary's Story Mary Young describes, in an interview with Hellen Muma, the cast-off treasures she discovered as a kid—and how those experiences turned her into a life-long collector. She shares a lesson learned from Louis Armstrong’s white handkerchief and remembers a great-aunt who influenced her with the gift of a corrugated gift box. 00:00 / 02:19 So, I know you have a lot of collections, and you keep creating new ones. What are some examples and what made you become a collector? I remember really clearly we lived in a sorta like actually my father taught in a boys boarding school so we lived in a dorm and you would take ethe trash all the way down to the basement to put it in these bins and I was old enough to take the trash down I guess for my mother So i as taking the trash down I went down to the trash room and I saw all this stuff and there was an older couple who worked was on the faculty and they were downsizing and they had piles of stuff and I was immediately really interested in it that was my earliest memory of finding extraordinary things in the trash and I’ve never stopped ever since When I was going through my paternal grandmothers stuff Among all the other stuff I found was a box of buttons I mean some of them were really old some go back to the 19th century and some buttons from when my grandmother during world war 2 was a part of the red cross ambulance driver corps ya know outside of Boston she didn't drive ambulances really but for some reason these women trained for that there were just and there were buttons they came from all different types of people now just women but mostly women the family and ya know from generations of all different people and I think I was already collecting antique buttons and I kind of dumped everything together and I would come up with some buttons from my mother and I’d put those in there and to me it's like this ocean of family history particularly for me of women history and it just is like it all flowed together into this soup and i just love that ya know I have made some things with the buttons like I've decorated some pillows with them I was thinking of framing some maybe I'll do it maybe I won't It's such an immediate connection to generations of women and its different as if I just got something from a tag sale cause this actually had to do something with people in my family who knows what but that's one example of potentially thousands I can tell. Previous Next

< 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

Listen to Amira talk about her experience finding a home at UMass. In her story, Amira shares the struggles of connecting at UMass and how sitting in RSO room on campus started to become more than just a place to do work but somewhere she met people who have become her close friends. Amira's Story Listen to Amira talk about her experience finding a home at UMass. In her story, Amira shares the struggles of connecting at UMass and how sitting in RSO room on campus started to become more than just a place to do work but somewhere she met people who have become her close friends. Amira's Story 00:00 / 03:58 Growing up, I never had a real sense of home. My parents immigrated from another country and they had to redo their training for their jobs and they were kind of just being placed wherever they were put for residency. So, I was just constantly moving from one state to another for their training, and never stayed in one place long enough to put down roots and make lasting friendships. Every time we moved I had to start all over again and it was exhausting. I remember the first time in the US, I was only six years old and we just moved from Saudi Arabia and moved to Ohio, and it just felt like a completely different world. I didn’t know anyone and I felt so out of place and I was learning English. All I think about was my friends back in Saudi Arabia and the familiarity of my old home. We moved several more times after that: Arkansas, Massachusetts, and now in Long Island. Each time we moved, it was for my parents’ jobs. They were both doctors and they had to redo their training once they came to America. I understood why we had to move, but that didn’t make it any easier. By the time I got to college, I was used to the idea of not having any real friends or connections. I was just there to get my degree and move on with my life. But things didn’t quite work out that way. I had some bad experiences with friendships before. I’d make friends with someone only to have them turn on me or something like that. It was disheartening, and I started to feel like maybe there was something wrong with me. But then I discovered the RSO room. There’s this room in my school’s student union and it stands for: registered student organization room. It’s basically supposed to serve for all the clubs on campus. For them to meet there and kinda hold their supplies there. Initially, one of the clubs that I joined, it was like a cultural club, a lot of people from there just started hanging out in this room to do homework and I remember being intimidated to go into this room cause it was just like these friends and like it was for studying but everyone was just kinda hanging out and talking and stuff like that. So I’d always avoid this room but I’d always want to go in. So little by little I would hang out in there sometimes, take a friend with me, maybe stop by, but I would never do anything too extreme. But eventually I started going to the RSO room more often and I would just keep seeing familiar faces all the time. And we started to hang out and get lunch and become friends and the RSO room just kind of became more than just this room for student organizations. So I think that was one of the first times where I felt like I formed that community and found that community on campus because it was insane like no matter what time of the day, if you go after your classes, if you go for lunch whatever, like there’s going to be at least five people in that room. It kind of reminded me of like some shows I would watch, like I know in Boy Meets World there’s always this one place in college where everyone would go to hang out and I just thought that was just like a TV thing or a movie thing but like I had that own thing with me and my friends. Like I credit a lot of my friendships to the RSO room because these are the people I’ve like celebrated my birthday with. These are people I go to concerts with. I’ve gone to New York with them and it was literally all just from seeing them often to go study everyday and just eventually kind of realizing we have more in common than we think. It was just such a relief because before that I was like really struggling to find my people on campus. I saw this like quote the other day and it said something about home is the place where people notice when you’re gone. And, like when I don’t go or when I’m sick or I have a lot of work, my friends will be like “Where are you, when are you coming?” blah blah blah. And that feeling is just, it’s so amazing. Like to feel like my presence matters and like I’m missed and all that stuff. It’s just been a great thing, and I, I recommend it to anyone who’s like looking to make friends. I’m like “just come to the RSO room like five times and you’ll be best friends with everyone.” Previous Next

< Back Marci's Story Dr. Marci Yoss talks to her new friend Camille Beckett (21) about her family, profession, and loneliness. Marci delves into the importance of her husband and children within her life, discusses how the medical field as positively impacted her, and how loneliness had changed as a concept in her life as she has aged. 00:00 / 03:26 Previous Next

Barbara S's Story Barbara discusses a life changing event from her childhood and again, in her younger years that ultimately, led her to find her love for the Pioneer Valley. Scroll to Listen Barbara S's Story 00:00 / 03:10 Eden: “Was there a turning point in your life where you made a major life change that has brought you to where you are today?” Barbara: “Being 69 years old, there are quite a few but I think the one that brought me up here to the Pioneer Valley is the most changing for the positive… so the train is moving along and we jumped off with our backpacks but it was higher than I thought and it was gravel. Something felt wrong after that so to speed forward a little bit, from that Summer on I could not lie flat. Every once in a while I would have a spasm. I found myself in the mid-70s working and managed a news bookshop in New Haven, Connecticut called ‘whitlocks’. We were changing the whole format of the shop over and what I remember is there were these big old fashioned desks. We were trying to put one on top of the other to try to make more room and as I did this I felt something– all I can say is– go. I ended up in bed for five months. During that time, I had a lot of time to think and a lot of time to read all these books on natural history from the bookshop and I had decided to apply to go to college. I graduated in 1970 and hadn’t gone so I applied to a few places that had wildlife biology. UMass in Amherst accepted me quite quickly and gave me a scholarship for the first year. So I moved up here and I went up the highway and there’s a place where you can see the hills that’s actually a bit obscured by trees now but you can see it's the Holyoke Range and I love mountains. I belt at them and experience that feeling of coming home. It’s been wonderful living up here in the valley. 10 years I’ve been in Amherst and the last 35 years I’ve been on the other side of the river in Northampton. It was a good move for me, a very good move. And for the last 35 years I’ve been an antiquarian bookseller. That’s where it finds me now, I’ve been selling old books, old postcards, etc.. Eden: “That’s awesome!”

< Back Robert's Story 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. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:00 Previous Next

< Back Luke's Story Luke shares a story about his uncle Peter who is a Carthuegen Monk in Slovenia. He talks about his personal relationship with Peter and how Peter inspires him in his own life. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:43 I’m discussing my uncle Peter who is a Carthuegen Monk in Slovenia, which is a very small country just on the northern tip of Italy, and he’s been there for probably about 30 years and he will be almost 70 now he's in his mid to late 60s. To give a little background I guess on the setting it’s a very beautiful place Slovenia and especially where he is. One of my uncles once said that Slovenia is Europe’s best kept secret. It’s got rolling hills, and lots of vineyards. It’s a very picturesque place. Speaking on my personal relationship with him, I’ve met him three times, but the last two are pretty impactful on me I would say. He’s a very interesting character and someone I do think I admire a great deal. I met him when I was 10. I went with my father and I don’t remember a lot from that trip because that was 12 years ago at this point, but I do know that after that trip took place we started writing to each other, and we kept a correspondence consistently for the last 12 years. Peter’s a really great guy, a very joyful guy. I think it’s interesting because his characteristics or his personality goes against what a lot of people would consider a Monk to have. He’s very energetic. He’s very joyful. He’s talkative. Perhaps some of that has to do with the fact that he seeing family and he doesn’t get a chance to do that very often, but it did surprise me meeting him last year, because there is so much energy and passion and just brightness about him that I wouldn’t necessarily had pictured a monk having. Most of the time we stayed in the guest house, and just shared meals together and shared stories, but we did on one day go out. We left the monastery, and we, went into one of the popular towns, sat by a river, which it seemed almost like a beach club. There were restaurants and canoes you could rent and things like that. So we did that, we had a great time, and then went and got food at McDonalds. He was really happy I think to get a taste of America in a long time. There are stories, he’s told us stories about being rebellious even as a monk and what he’s, I guess expected to do. You are not supposed to leave the monastery. They have a weekly walk that they take together, but beyond that, they are only supposed to leave to go to doctor’s appointments to dentist appointments or something that’s really mandatory that they have to leave the cloister for. But, he tends to break away a little more if he can. I don’t think what he does I could do. It’s a very specific vocation and it's a vocation that requires a lot of dedication. His entire being is in it. And he’s on another continent from the rest of his family and he’s been there for decades. And when my grandparents, both of his parents passed away he wasn’t able to come to their funerals. And when he passes away he will be buried in an unmarked grave within the monastery. So his belief and how strong his belief is, and what he gets from God is something that I’ve never seen from anyone else. But I can tell that it gives him a lot of strength, and I can tell that he is really called to do it. I guess you know there is a relation in this story, quite clearly to God and you know, what role that plays in everyone’s lives that's met him and what role that plays in his life. And I don’t know, it's interesting because I am 22 at this point, I haven’t necessarily found my way or found an answer in my own mind as to whether I believe in a higher being and what that might be, what religion might be “right”, and all of these different answers. But his devotion is very inspirational to me, and I find I pull a lot from it. I don’t know how to encapsulate my relationship with him and what he means, but I will say that I love him and I find him inspirational in a lot of senses. I’m excited to see him again at some point, hopefully in the near future. I’d like to go alone maybe the next time, I think that would be interesting and beneficial Previous Next

< Back Bert's Story 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. Scroll to listen 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. Previous Next

< Back Hannah's Story Hannah talks about the risk that she took in studying abroad in Amsterdam and her experience amercing herself in the culture by herself and how it impacted her future career path. 00:00 / 02:07 Would you tell me about a time that you took a risk? A time I took a risk was going abroad last semester, my fall semester, senior year to Amsterdam. And I know it's like cliche like, oh yeah, you like go abroad, whatever. But I really wanted my abroad experience to be as natural as possible. I didn't want to go to an American school in a foreign country. I didn't want to go to a school where I knew I was going to be surrounded by other American college students. I really wanted to just like go abroad and experience like culture shock like head on. So I decided to go to fret university type in Amsterdam, like by myself. I didn't know, I didn't know it was. So when I got there, I literally like booked my flight a week before and just got on a plane and shipped myself off to Amsterdam knowing no one. And yeah, that was the time I really did take a risk. And what did you learn about yourself? Did learn that taking a risk is not only can I do it and I'm very capable um but like it just gave me that confidence that I can take risks in the future. And that taking risks actually is a good thing. And I have so many positive outcomes from doing it and I really have made some of my best friends um throughout the world just doing that experience. And so post grad, I'm a senior. So I'm graduating next at the end of the semester in like a month, which is terrifying. But I, I decided to take a job in South Korea, um, teaching English, which I never, I never would have done, had I not taken that risk to go to Amsterdam because it's like a similar situation where I don't know a soul there. I don't know a soul in Seoul. Um, but I, I don't know anyone there. I'm just going by myself to a country that's thousands of miles away, um, with a 13 hour time zone, like, and I'm ok with it and I'm excited for it and I'm, I'm not crying because of stress this time, but I'm really excited. Previous Next

< Back Katherine's Story Katherine talks about her family heritage and values and how that impacted her views on the world. She discusses how her upbringing and playing music with her siblings brings them closer together. Katherine also details how the values that she was raised with are still instilled in her and are instilled in her children as well. 00:00 / 04:28 My family of origin story comes from both my parents who told me the stories of how they grew up and their parents and grandparents. For my parents, their families were very important. Both of them came from English backgrounds and they were farmers. They raised cattle, they kept the sense of animals and planting even when we no longer lived on a farm, but it is important. That is part of my family theme and values is to be really connected to the land and animals. When we were growing up our values always had to do with good health, lots of exercise, and taking care of your pets before you took care of yourself. Who needed your support and help before you were doing your own thing? Values really had to do with honoring family and being totally transparent and honest about what was going on with you, being a good communicator that was kind of a core family value, and doing your best. I have 4 siblings, all about 2 years apart. It was very organized, our lives were very very organized, I guess you have to when you have a big family like that – my parents were both teachers so they expected us to have a certain routine to get up and make our beds, practice and do homework, we all had to keep track of what we were responsible for. We all played instruments, we all had to practice, my mom would start the egg timer for about an hour before we went to school, we had to practice our instruments. As we grew up and we left home, and we went to college and got jobs and got married and had our own children the relationship with all of them at the time have change over time. In that period, it was really important for our kids to know each other so that now as they are adults and they have families, they have cousins that they feel quite connected to which is kind of wonderful, we do a lot of sharing of our lives together. We all go to the same island in Maine in the summer, so 3 of my siblings built and also my family too we built our own little houses there, kind of near the log cabin so that more of us could be there at the same time. It’s a wonderful place for family gatherings and lunch picnics on the rocks, swimming in the quarries and biking around the island, lots of fun things we do together. I take my violin and my younger brother plays the cello, brings his cello, my sister is a singer, but she also plays the keyboard too. It's really fun to play together, we often say wouldn’t our mother be delighted because she's the one who made us practice, its paid off for her because we are still doing it. The basic values that I learned from them I think are still there, are still the core values, but we do keep connected, that’s important. We now passing on the cabin in Maine, the log cabin to our own children so that means the cousins will have to figure out how to work together to keep the boats in good shape and keep the cabins clean and enjoy that place with their children, with our grandchildren. It's kind of a multigenerational process in Maine and that’s where I keep connected to my sibling's. It has been fun as we met and talked to explore family a little but because that to me is the most important set of relationships certainly that I have and I think that most people have, my kids probably pass on the same values to their children too Things that they learned as they were growing up, they keep connected through each other, keeping connected and learning through each other is just really really important no matter what the ups and downs of one's life might be. Previous Next

< Back Jesse's Story Jesse talks with Lauren about being wrongfully accused and sent to prison. He shares the lessons he learned during that difficult time. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:41 “The toughest thing I went through was, when I was in college, I had a little run in with the law over a marijuana issue. When the whole thing started I was 18 years old. I was in college out in Western Pennsylvania. That particular town was under very, very right winged conservative area. They were down on drugs. I was accused of selling $15 worth of marijuana. And went to trial. It really should never even gone to trial. I mean they had no real evidence. There were four people in the room at the time it was supposed to have happened and three of them said it didn't happen, and one of them said it did. And they decided to believe that one person. I was the only one. I was pretty sure it was because I was Jewish and there a very strong anti-Semitic taint to the whole thing. So I was convicted. The judge said, as far as he’s concerned, selling drugs is as bad as murder. So he gave me the maximum sentence, even though it was my first offense. He gave me 3 years in prison. I didn’t take it seriously, I really didn’t think I was gonna go to prison. It just seemed so outrageous. My lawyer was taking an appeal then I got a call one day from my father and he said, the appeal fell through and you have to go to prison. So, I freaked out, I was 21 years old at the time. Really didn’t know what to expect. My first week there was very very scary. It was overcrowded, so they didn’t have room for me in the part of the prison where they first introduce people. So I was put in solitary confinement for a week, which was really not a lot of fun. I thought my life was over at that point. Prison is like hell. It’s like everybody’s there, it's full of anger and aggression, but I found some friends there, actually. There were several people there, that were there for drug related offenses, you know, marijuana. And we weren’t criminals, you know, we were just kids who got caught up in a system. Because I had friends, I was able to make it through. Could’ve gotten out in one year, but it didn't seem like that was gonna happen. They wanted me to repent and say that what I had done was wrong. I was adamant that I thought the drug laws were wrong. I didn't really repent and they took that as a mark against me. So I didn’t know how long I’d be in there. It was a hard thing. One of the things that got me through was, I had a girlfriend before I ended up there. She wrote me almost everyday. She would write me a letter like almost everyday, at least 5 or 6 times a week. And that really helped me make it through, getting those letters everyday, really lifted my spirits. It turned out that my father was really not very good. I went to prison because of him. He told me he had taken the appeals, but didn’t. He told the lawyer not to take the appeals. And that’s why I ended up going to prison, my own father. And I didn't find that out until later. My mother hired a lawyer from the national organization for the reform of marijuan laws and he told me, he says, “they never took the appeals, you had grounds for appeals but they never took it.” He applied for what's called, commutation, which is reeducation of sentence. My mother went to court and testified for me. One day I was about 8 months into my sentence and they called me up and said, “do you have a job for when you get out of prison?” I said, “what are you talking about? I’m not getting out for another 2 and half years.”And they said, “No, right here it says you’re getting out next month.” I said, “what?!” And sure enough the commutation had gone through and nobody had told me. I was released from prison after about 7 or 8 months. So I was really, really, happy about that. I was so excited. That day I got out I was so happy. I felt so good. It was like, okay, I made it through that. If I can make it through that, I can make it through anything. So I felt really confident, really good, and really proud of myself that I had made it through and I hadn’t turned bitter, and I hadn’t gotten worse. You know, like, I got out and went right back to school, got my degree and went on to graduate school. In some ways, prison helped me, I mean I would not recommend it to anybody, it wasn’t worth it, but it did help me. It did help me focus my life. I guess the main lesson I learned was that no matter how bad it gets, there is a way forward and there's a way out. Nothing bad lasts forever. I still feel that freedom I felt on the day I got let out, the strength I felt. I can still tap into that today. As bad as things get, they eventually end. Bad things don’t last forever and there’s a way through. That’s what I learned.” Previous Next