Your legacy does not start in death; your legacy starts now! Consider how often you have learned about a remarkable facet of a beloved’s life after transitioning. Wouldn’t you have wanted to be able to ask them some questions? This session is designed to start a conversation with our clients/consumers, family members, and ourselves about the legacy that they/we want to leave behind when they can ask questions and make plans about it. Specifically, what lessons, words of wisdom, and family stories do you want to share with those within your beloved communities? What legacies do you want to leave those who live on after you? What do you want to happen to your possessions after your death, and how will others know why they are treasured in the first place? This session is not so much about the monetary value of things but about discussing what is important and meaning making while the opportunity still exists. The audience for this session is social workers, geriatric care managers, therapists, family caregivers, and those who are beginning to explore their own legacy, essentially everyone.
Learning Objectives Participants in this workshop will:
• Understand that beginning the process of legacy building involves self-exploration.
• Utilize tools and specific resources like the genogram as part of storytelling, to understand the past, and present, and plan for the future.
• Plan to share one story about a treasured item that reveals part of your own legacy to your beloved family.
• Add to a list of questions to guide conversations around planning for where one’s most precious possessions should be placed when a major life transition occurs.
• Identify some community-based resources that can receive items that may interest community-held archives.
Dr. Norma Thomas received her bachelor’s degree in social work from Penn. State University. She then went on to obtain her master’s degree in social work from Temple University’s School of Social Administration and her doctorate degree in social work from UPENN. Dr. Thomas began as the MSW Program Director at California University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2007 and retired in January 2017. She was promoted to full professor in 2014. From 1994-2004 she worked for the Widener University Center for Social Work Education where she achieved tenure as an Associate Professor, also holding positions as Assistant Director and Baccalaureate Program Director. She worked from 1975-1984 for the Delaware County Office on Services for the Aging and from 1984-1992 for the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging. In addition, she was the co-founder and President of the Center on Ethnic & Minority Aging, Inc., Philadelphia, PA from 1995-2008. She is currently an online instructor for the Center For Social Work Education, Widener University.
Dr. Raina J. Leon, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Canto Mundo and Macondo, has been published in over 100 publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction and academic scholarship. She is currently a full professor of education in the Kalmanovitz School of Education at St. Mary’s College of California. She came to St. Mary’s from the Department of Defense Education Activity, where for three years she taught military dependents in Bamberg, Germany. Leon received her BA in Journalism from Pennsylvania State University with minors in African American Studies, English, International Studies and Spanish, graduating with honors in English with a poetry manuscript supervised by Dr. William J Harris and Dr. Aldon Nielsen; MA in Teaching of English from Teachers College Columbia University; MA in Educational Leadership from Framingham State University; and PhD in Education under the Culture, Curriculum and Change strand at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She recently completed her MFA in Poetry at St. Mary’s College of California.