DEBORAH SHARES HER STORY

Deborah is a Sixty Something woman who lives on a very small island along the coast of a very big city. She is also a great example of what the poet John Donne meant when he penned his famous line that “No man is an island.”

Of course, had the poet ever met Deborah, he might have amended his oft quoted line to read, “No woman is an island” but such enlightened thinking would probably have been way beyond the time of a 16^th century Englishman.

The heart of Deborah’s modern day story lies not so much in living on an island in the shadow of the biggest city in America but in her belief in the timeless importance of being connected to all of humankind. That’s what Deborah has been doing all her life, working for the Greater Good by being open to other people in her life.

“I’ve always tried to live my life to my full potential,” she says. “I believe it is so important to recognize the good in other people, to value others. It makes me feel alive.”

About four years ago, Deborah moved from Seattle all across the country to a place with a fabled history and maybe the most memorable name of any city in America, The Bronx, New York City’s northernmost borough hard by the country’s eastern seashore.

She eventually moved even farther east, this time out into watery Long Island Sound to another Bronx neighborhood, a place called City Island, a mere slip of land 1.5 miles long and a half-mile wide with a population of 4,487. The tiny island is located in the western end of Long Island Sound a short drive over the City Island Bridge into mainland Bronx, population 1.4-million, and the much larger New York City, pop. 8.4-million.

It was out there on City Island that Deborah settled into a new home for herself in a three-story walkup, which itself provides her with plenty of aerobic exercise just coming and going every day. She adds to that by an exercise regimen of daily walks around the island’s neighborhood streets, busy marinas and sea-washed waterfronts.

She landed a job running the front desk as the receptionist and keeper of records at the local office of a non-profit social services center whose mission is to help seniors cope with the afflictions and challenges of life. Working with seniors appeals to this island woman, a natural extension her life as an alumna of a religion-based university who spent nearly two decades of her life working at churches in the Seattle area.

Deborah has been using Prevagen only a short time, but has already begun to feel an improvement in her memory. “I’m a tad bit sharper,” she says.

A sharp mind is an especially valuable asset in the lifestyle of this new member of the PrevaGeneration as she works to help serve others. “It’s so important that we not judge other people and form wrong assumptions about the people we meet. We all need to listen to the other person, and find the good in them.”

It’s the kind of thinking John Donne could have used in another poem, but then again, he hadn’t met Deborah or heard what she had to say.