Developing Our Hearts: A Playful & Philosophical Conversation About Care, Caring, Creativity and Community - with Neshia Alaovae, Mary Fridley, Sarah Friedland, Lynn Casteel Harper and Courtney E. Martin

In a world where it’s tempting to harden our hearts in the face of crisis, pain, fear, and uncertainty, people across the globe are searching for more powerful, and more human, ways to care. For our clients, friends, family and loved ones. For our communities. For our world.

Guided by the discoveries of those reimagining aging, dementia, end-of-life, wellness, healing, spirituality and community, we invite you to join us in a playful, philosophical exploration of care and caring as something we create together.

An exploration unbound by the endless polarities – care/cared for, expert/patient, emotional/rational, problem/solution, mind/body, healthy/sick, living/dying – that limit our collective ability to respond in ways as collaborative as they are effective.

We invite everyone, including professionals in the field, to explore how we might step outside our comfort zones and create environments that support us to:

More fully express our humanity
Listen in ways that promote intimacy and discovery
Embrace unknowability with as much curiosity as fear
Care in ways less bound by the pull to fix or to return to “normal,”

This is an invitation, both to open, and to develop, our hearts so they are as big, as loving, as messy, as conflicted and as joy-filled as the world we want.

We hope you’ll join us.

Participant Biographies

Neshia Alaovae is a proud Black and Samoan disabled mama, writer, mental health consultant and death worker. She cares deeply about connecting cultural wisdom, ancestral resilience and BIPOC joy to create grounded, empowered possibilities for how we live and how we die. Currently she runs A Thoughtful Death, a deathcare practice dedicated to building collective death literacy, celebrating cultural identity and creating sustainable grief practices that honor the fullness of our lives.

Mary Fridley is a community builder, performance activist, group therapist and developmentalist on faculty at the East Side Institute, where she cocreated and leads The Joy of Dementia (You Gotta Be Kidding!). She is also co-founder and coordinator of Reimagining Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice, as well as an agebuzz columnist, and author/co-author of dozens of articles, essays and chapters.

Sarah Friedland is a filmmaker and choreographer debut feature film, Familiar Touch, earned critical acclaim at the Venice International Film Festival in 2024, where she received the Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Debut Film and the Horizons Award for Best Director. Sarah also works in creative aging, as a care companion for artists in NYC with cognitive decline, a facilitator of intergenerational film projects, and a teaching artist working in older adult communities.

Lynn Casteel Harper, an essayist, minister, and chaplain, is the pastor of Olivet Congregational Church UCC in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Lynn previously served as the Minister of Older Adults at The Riverside Church (NYC) and as a nursing home chaplain. Her debut book, On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. To learn more, click here.

Courtney E. Martin is the author of five books, including her most recent, Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School. She writes frequently about care, dementia, and the ethical dimensions of family life at her Substack newsletter, Examined Family. She also hosts two podcasts: Slate's How To! and The Wise Unknown.

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