Elder Flowering: Lived Experiences of Growing Older

DECEMBER PUBLIC WORKSHOP WITH SIGNE EKLUND SCHAEFER AND KAREN GIERLACH

Join us to celebrate the recent publication of Elder Flowering – Lived Experiences of Growing Older, edited by Signe Eklund Schaefer and Karen Gierlach. This workshop will include readings from the book by some of its twenty contributors, all of whom are age 70 or older and active colleagues in biography and social art activities. In addition, we will invite participants to experience exercises in small groups around questions of aging. Before we close, there will be time for general conversation.

Each workshop on Zoom includes small group exercises and reflections shared in the full group. We will use artistic and imaginative exercises to open up biographical experiences. And, as always, we will practice listening deeply.

Our monthly workshops are not recorded to respect the confidentiality of our participants. The cost for for our public workshops is on a sliding scale from $25.00 to $100.00. You will receive a Zoom link a day prior to the workshop.

Signe Eklund Schaefer was a founding member of the Center for Biography and Social Art after having initiated the training program in 1996. She directed Foundation Studies at Sunbridge College in New York for over twenty years, and was on the faculty of Emerson College in England before that. In addition to co-editing with Karen Gierlach the new Elder Flowering – Lived Experiences of Growing Older, she has written three other books since retiring from fulltime teaching: She Was Always There – Sophia as a Story for Our Time; Why on Earth? – Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming; and I Give You My Word – Women’s Letters as Life Support, 1973-1987. A mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, she lives in Great Barrington, MA, with her husband Christopher Schaefer.

Karen Gierlach grew up in Germany and England and attended Waldorf schools in both countries. Since retiring from Waldorf teaching, she has facilitated biography and social art workshops for teachers and parents, as well as anthroposophical and Christian Community groups in the US and in other countries. In recent years, she has taken workshops into public spaces like the local library, to groups of neighbors, and to adult education courses in San Francisco and Sacramento state universities where people have expressed much appreciation for them. She served on the board of CBSA for five years.

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