Being an Ally to Elders
To be an effective ally to elders, you can start by getting a good picture of what vital aging looks like. Rid your mind of any recorded images, and seek out models of vital aging. Read about them, get to know them.
Discharging on your own feelings about growing older, aging, and dying is one of the most important things you can do, not only to be a good ally, but to improve your own life.
Making your relationships with your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older friends just the way you want them, and getting as close as you can, is being an effective ally to elders.
I encourage you to also get close to older people in RC. Love us, counsel with us, listen to our stories, ask us about our lives, and play with us. This will create a much richer Community for all of us.
Younger people sometimes mix us up with their parents or other elders and expect us to be ways that have nothing to do with us. Please discharge on these identifications and get to know who we really are. As you become closer to us, you will find out about our dreams for the world and for the elders' liberation movement. You will become a part of it.
Giving our journal, Older and Bolder, to older friends and relatives might get them interested in joining an RC class. Reading Older and Bolder yourself will inform you about the oppression of ageism so that you can interrupt it whenever it crops up.*
We are all in this together: young, middle-aged, and old. How great it will be when we are all allies to one another, when we are all completely close!
Dorothy Carroll
Editor, Older and Bolder
West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
*Crops up means appears