Forty-one is not the average age of a person living in long term care, but then again, Mary-Anne Jones is not your average resident. An advocate for persons with disabilities, she is learning Icelandic – and that is just the tip of the iceburg; an iceburg that she hopes to find when she fulfills her lifelong dream of visiting Iceland. This is her story.
Born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Mary-Anne was born with a number of conditions that deteriorated her vision. Among them was congenital cataracts, which were operated on, and optic nerve atrophy. Since infancy her vision was a challenge and, although her family searched for answers, they were provided very little.
After attending public high school, she enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program at Saint Thomas University in New Brunswick. Unlike high school, which was a challenge, se found the university experience more accepting. Mary-Anne found other people that had things in common with her.
Over the years, Mary-Anne worked at Visitor Information Centres, as a receptionist for many organizations and working for the archives in N.B. transcribing reels. She is also an advocate for persons with disabilities, sitting on various committees like the President’s Advisory Committee for Accessibility and the New Brunswick and Halifax chapters of the Canadian Council of the Blind. She volunteered with the Halifax Regional Municipality Advisory Committee for Persons with Disabilities, the Canadian National Institute of the Blind (CNIB), the QEII and the Disabled Individual Alliance (DIAL).
Everyone has a life-long dream, and Mary-Anne’s is to visit Iceland. Since she was young, she was intrigued by the culture, the geology and the language. She has six Icelandic pen pals that she keeps in touch with through Skype, a software application that allows users to make voice calls and chats over the Internet. She is also learning to speak Icelandic, and teaching English to one of her Icelandic pen pals. She is saving up for her dream and hopes to fulfill it in the coming years.
Being part of a diverse group can be challenging, and Mary-Anne’s experience in diversity at Northwood is two-fold; she is younger and she’s visually impaired. For her, working and taking part in things that intellectually challenging her give her a sense of self-worth. For her, the transition from living independently to living at Northwood in care was challenging because of the assumptions that others have about residents receiving care. Should people be sheltered because they’re receiving care? From her perspective, they shouldn’t. From a younger person’s perspective, her freedom to choose what is right for her is important; whether it is challenging or not.
“The way I see it is that a lot of people here have worked their whole lives and that’s fine…but I haven’t. Now what do I do? How do I fit in?” says Mary-Anne. “It requires a shift in thinking about how we define our younger generations and how to keep things purposeful for them and give them a sense of self-worth.”
Along with her passion for learning and teaching, Mary-Anne loves jewelry-making, photography and writing. She has written novellas and poetry and would be lost without her computer. She loves swimming, aquasize and working out at Northwood’s on-site gym. She also loves listening to international radio. For her, despite the challenges that she faces at Northwood she also sees our organization as a place with a great deal of potential for future growth.
To Mary-Anne, the fact that we have the full spectrum of living options means that we also have an opportunity to gain input from all of the people we serve.
