Building upon the success of its last workshop, “Grief, Loss and Possibility,” the LGBT Elder Initiative will present another transformative event in its Conversation series.
“Still Here: Defiant Aging with HIV” will take place 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. May 23 at the John C. Anderson Apartments. The free event, presented in partnership with the AIDS Library and the People’s Paper Co-Op, will transform and recycle outdated medical materials and papers into blank sheets of paper for community members to share their stories of living with HIV/AIDS.
“So many years after the start of this epidemic, there is a whole bunch of info that is useless: treatments, therapies, things we thought we knew but now we know better,” said LGBTEI chair Heshie Zinman. “We are collecting and gathering all that old information and we are going to repurpose it into paper. That paper will be for the purpose of collecting stories for people who are living with HIV and have survived AIDS.”
The stories will then be made into a book that will be housed in the AIDS Library and displayed in other organizations throughout the city.
Zinman said LGBTEI has never done anything like this before. When the AIDS Library approached him about the collaborative idea, he said his organization eagerly got on board, seeing how cathartic of an event it could be for the aging LGBT community.
“It is so comforting when you’re around people who have had similar experiences,” Zinman said. “To just talk about it — what we lived through, what we learned and how it has impacted our life — without getting maudlin or sad.”
Zinman also said the previous grief-focused Conversation event was extremely powerful, and that he saw similar potential for this event.
“The beauty of that is we experience it and have the opportunity to look at the possibility that comes from that — whether it is embracing other individuals or new friendships. It’s looking at what we have in terms of health and possibility, a bright future and whatever that may be.”
For more information or to register for the event, visit www.lgbtei.org, call 215-550-1460 or email [email protected].