Changing the Way, We Speak, Act, and Show Up: Becoming an Ally Against Ageism

 There’s a moment that happens at the end of a good visit. The dishes are done. The stories have been shared. You stand at the door a little longer than necessary, knowing you’re leaving with something with which you didn’t arrive. A new understanding. A responsibility. A quiet resolve to do things differently.

This is that moment.

Over the course of this series, we’ve walked through workplaces, homes, community halls, and public celebrations. We’ve listened to stories of exclusion and dignity, loss and contribution, invisibility and joy. We’ve named ageism not as a personal failure, but as something woven into systems, language, and habits we rarely stop to examine.

And now we arrive at the final question: What do we do with what we know?

Becoming an ally against ageism doesn’t begin with policy or programs. It begins closer to home—in the way we speak, the way we listen, and the way we show up for one another.

I think back to a conversation I once overheard. A group of women, all older, laughing together. One of them was being praised and someone said, “Well, you look good for your age.” Everyone chuckled. Including me. And then the moment passed.

Later, it stayed with me.

No harm was intended. The comment was offered as a compliment, and because it was self-directed or shared among peers, it felt harmless. But scratch the surface and the message is clear: aging is something to be defended against. Looking good is an exception. Worth is conditional.

I didn’t challenge it. Not because I didn’t know better, but because ageism often travels disguised as humour, politeness, or “just the way we talk.” And that’s exactly why it’s so powerful.

Language shapes what we believe is possible.

When we say things like “I’m too old for that” or “I couldn’t wear that at my age,” we may think we’re being realistic or self-deprecating. What we’re often doing is reinforcing a story that aging narrows life rather than deepening it. That curiosity has an expiry date. That joy, learning, risk, or visibility belong to someone else now.

Internalized ageism is quiet. It rarely feels like discrimination. But it’s one of the strongest barriers to change, because it teaches us to step back before anyone else asks us to.

Allyship asks us to notice those moments, and gently interrupt them.

Sometimes that means pausing and rephrasing. Sometimes it means asking, “Why does age matter here?” Sometimes it means not laughing along, or offering a different perspective. Not with anger or superiority, but with curiosity and care.

At the community level, allyship grows when we move beyond intention into structure. As a seniors’ association, we actively encourage programs that bring generations together—not as charity, but as collaboration. Mentoring initiatives where knowledge flows both ways. Shared projects where planning, leadership, and credit are truly shared. Spaces where age is neither hidden nor highlighted, simply respected.

These efforts matter because ageism doesn’t disappear on its own. It’s challenged through repeated, visible examples of older adults contributing, leading, learning, and being fully present in community life.

Education plays a role here too. When people learn about aging—not as decline, but as a complex, varied, and meaningful stage of life—attitudes shift. Fear softens. Assumptions loosen their grip. We begin to see later life not as an ending, but as a continuation with its own richness and responsibility.

My hope is that as you’ve read these blogs, you’ve caught yourself thinking, “I hadn’t noticed that before,” or “I’ve probably said that,” or even, “I want to do better.” That’s not guilt talking. That’s awareness waking up.

And awareness is where momentum begins.

Challenging ageism doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence. The willingness to stay in the conversation. To question привычные phrases. To advocate for inclusive policies at work, in housing, in healthcare, and in community planning. To notice who isn’t in the room—and ask why.

Most of all, it requires us to see aging not as a problem to solve, but as a shared human experience we are all moving toward together.

If this series has done its work, it hasn’t lectured. It has walked alongside you. Using data as a compass, stories as the vehicle, and community as the destination.

And now, standing here at the door, the question lingers—not as a challenge, but as an invitation:

How will you speak, act, and show up differently now?

That answer, lived out in small, everyday choices, is how ageism finally begins to lose its hold.

From Conversation to Culture Change: How Intergenerational Work Transforms Communities

It started, as many good things do, with a simple invitation.

The city was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the May Day Festival, a tradition rooted deeply in our town’s identity. Generations had grown up with it, children weaving ribbons around the Maypole, parents lining the streets, grandparents telling stories of how it used to be “back when.” This time, the organizers wanted something more than a reenactment. They wanted the celebration to mean something.

Someone asked a question that doesn’t get asked often enough: What if seniors were part of this, not just watching, but helping shape it?

When the idea was brought to the seniors’ board, there was a pause. Not because of hesitation, but because people understood the weight of the invitation. This wasn’t about nostalgia. This was about partnership. About trust. About standing shoulder to shoulder with a younger generation and saying, “Let’s build this together.”

The plan that emerged was bold in its simplicity. Twenty-four seniors would join Grade 5 students from three local schools to dance the Maypole together. Not perform for each other. Perform with each other. Organizers in their twenties, thirties, and forties would coordinate logistics alongside volunteers in their seventies and eighties. Everyone would have a role. No one would be a token.

What followed was something quietly powerful.

In school gyms and community halls, seniors learned steps alongside children young enough to be their great-grandchildren. There were missteps and laughter, ribbons tangled and untangled, stories exchanged between practice runs. A senior showed a child how to recover gracefully from a missed step. A child showed a senior a shortcut for remembering the pattern. No one was “helping” anyone. They were learning together.

This is where ageism begins to lose its grip.

So much discrimination thrives on distance, on the idea that “older” and “younger” are separate worlds with little to offer each other. Intergenerational work collapses that distance. It replaces assumptions with familiarity. It turns abstract respect into shared experience.

On the day of the festival, the four Maypoles stood tall in the centre of the arena, ribbons bright against the spring sky. As the music began, seniors and students moved together, weaving colour and rhythm into something unmistakably joyful. The crowd didn’t see “old” and “young.” They saw a community in motion.

And then something unexpected happened.

The seniors were invited back the following year, not as a novelty, but as tradition. They were asked to help kick off the next hundred years of May Day celebrations.

That’s culture change.

Intergenerational work doesn’t just soften attitudes; it reshapes systems. When young organizers see older adults as collaborators, it changes who gets invited to the table. When children grow up working alongside seniors, it rewrites what aging looks like in their minds. When seniors are trusted with visible, meaningful roles, it challenges the quiet narrative that usefulness has an expiry date.

Importantly, this work succeeds only when it’s grounded in equality. Not mentorship that flows one way. Not “keeping seniors busy.” True intergenerational projects are built on mutual respect and shared power. Each generation brings something essential: energy, perspective, memory, creativity, and steadiness. When one is missing, the whole structure weakens.

The beauty is that action doesn’t have to be grand to be transformative.

A community garden planned by teens and tended by retirees. A storytelling project where students record elders’ histories, and elders learn new technology in return. A neighbourhood safety initiative where older residents’ lived knowledge complements younger residents’ organizing skills. These are not expensive solutions. They are human ones.

Ageism thrives in isolation. It withers in connection.

The May Day dance mattered not because it was perfect, but because it was shared. It reminded everyone watching and participating that communities are strongest when all ages are visible, valued, and involved in shaping the future.

Conversation is where change begins. Culture shifts when we move from talking about each other to working with each other.

Sometimes, all it takes is an invitation and the courage to say yes.

Seeing the Longevity Dividend: From Burden to Shared Asset

Every conversation about aging eventually seems to circle back to the same question: Can we afford it?

An aging population is often framed as a looming burden on healthcare, on housing, on public services. The language is heavy with concern and cost. What rarely makes it into the conversation is a different way of seeing things: not as a problem to manage, but as a resource to value.

This is where the idea of the Longevity Dividend comes in. It invites us to ask a better question: What becomes possible when people live longer, fuller lives, and are included rather than sidelined?

I saw a living answer to that question at the Tri-City Seniors’ annual Christmas gathering.

The room was warm, crowded, and alive with conversation. People gathered around tables, cups of coffee in hand, sharing stories that moved easily between past and present. Someone talked about Christmas mornings growing up. Another remembered the sound of boots on frozen sidewalks and the sting of cold air on bare cheeks.

One story kept resurfacing, spoken with a particular kind of fondness, the wooden crates of Japanese oranges.

For many, those oranges were the unmistakable sign that Christmas had arrived. They were rare, precious, and shared carefully. A small luxury that marked the season and stayed in memory long after the holidays passed.

As the stories flowed, something else became clear. These weren’t just recollections. They were threads of lived history, of immigration, resilience, community, and change. Knowledge carried, not in textbooks, but in voices, laughter, and shared recognition.

Then the conversation shifted.

Today, one of the signs of the Christmas season isn’t oranges in wooden crates. It’s the growing need at the food bank.

Without fanfare, the group had acted. The seniors collected 134 pounds of food and over $300 in cash donations for the local food bank. It wasn’t a symbolic gesture. It was practical, immediate care.

Many of these same people remembered walking to school every day, regardless of snow or rain, in towns across British Columbia and Canada. They remembered winters that were cold but predictable. And almost all of them shared the same reflection: no matter the weather, they didn’t worry about whether there would be food on the table.

That memory matters.

It connects past stability with present concern. It fuels a sense of responsibility, not out of guilt, but out of gratitude. These seniors weren’t acting because they were asked to. They were acting because they care deeply about the community they helped build and the future being shaped by the next generation.

This is the Longevity Dividend in action.

When older adults are fully included, they bring more than time or availability. They bring perspective. They bring continuity. They bring a long view that connects what was, what is, and what could be.

Too often, we frame seniors as recipients of care, of services, of support. And yes, support matters. But that frame is incomplete. It misses the daily acts of leadership, creativity, volunteering, caregiving, and quiet generosity that sustain communities.

The Longevity Dividend isn’t just economic. It’s social. It shows up in mentorship, in civic engagement, in the passing on of traditions, and in the willingness to notice when something isn’t right and do something about it.

What made that Christmas gathering powerful wasn’t nostalgia. It was relevance. These seniors weren’t living in the past. They were using the past to inform present action.

When generations come together around shared values, care, fairness, responsibility, the benefits flow both ways. Younger people gain context and grounding. Older people remain connected and purposeful. Communities become more resilient because knowledge and care aren’t siloed by age.

Reframing aging doesn’t mean ignoring challenges. It means refusing to define people solely by what they might need. It means recognizing what they already give, and what becomes possible when we invite them fully into the story.

At that Christmas gathering, the Longevity Dividend didn’t appear as a policy or a statistic. It showed up as food on a scale, cash in an envelope, and hope quietly passed from one generation to the next.

And that kind of dividend keeps paying forward.

Home, Safety, and Dignity: Ageism Where We Live

When her husband died after 35 years of marriage, the house went quiet in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

At first, there were visits. Condolences. Offers of help that felt sincere but short-lived. Then, gradually, the visits stopped. His children came around less and less. One son began speaking to her differently, questioning her decisions, criticizing how she handled things, and demanding items he believed should belong to him.

The grandchildren followed his lead. Calls went unanswered. Invitations stopped coming. Without a formal break or confrontation, she found herself erased from a family she had been part of for decades.

Grief has a way of hollowing out space, but this was something else. This was loss layered on loss.

The house she and her husband had just bought,  meant to be the next chapter, became filled with echoes. His chair. Their routines. The plans they never got to live. She stayed for as long as she could, but eventually she said something that stuck with me: “If I stay here, I’ll stop moving forward.”

So, she made the decision to leave.

What should have been a practical step became an obstacle course.

She was a widow on a low income, looking for a place that was safe, affordable, and close enough to services to allow her to remain independent. The listings were scarce. The waiting lists are long. Some landlords didn’t return her calls. Others asked questions that felt less like screening and more like doubt.

How old are you?
Do you live alone?
What’s your income source?

None of these questions is illegal on its own. Together, they form a quiet gatekeeping system that filters out people deemed “risky,” “temporary,” or “too complicated.”

This is how ageism shows up in housing, not as outright refusal, but as narrowing options until people are left choosing between unsafe, unaffordable, or isolating alternatives.

For older adults, housing isn’t just about shelter. It’s about safety, dignity, and connection. When those are compromised, everything else becomes harder. Managing health. Staying socially engaged. Asking for help without feeling like a burden.

For this woman, ageism didn’t arrive alone. It arrived hand in hand with income insecurity, grief, and isolation. Each amplified the other. Systems that might have offered protection felt distant and fragmented. Abuse within the family was subtle enough to be dismissed, but sharp enough to wound deeply.

Elder abuse doesn’t always leave visible marks. Sometimes it looks like pressure. Entitlement. Disrespect masked as concern. When ageism is present, reports of mistreatment are more easily minimized. “Family conflict.” “Misunderstandings.” “She’s emotional, she’s grieving.”

And so, vulnerability becomes invisible.

Housing instability among seniors is rising, and homelessness is no longer confined to younger populations. Older adults are showing up in shelters, couch-surfing with friends, or staying in unsafe situations because the alternative feels worse. Many never appear in statistics because they disappear quietly.

What makes this especially painful is that these are not failures of individuals. They are failures of design.

Our housing systems were not built with aging in mind. They assume stable income, family support, and physical resilience. When any of those slip away, the system offers very little grace.

And yet, even in these gaps, there are moments of resilience.

Eventually, she found a place. Not perfect. Smaller than she had imagined. But hers. A place where she could breathe again. Where she could rebuild routines without walking through memories that pulled her backward.

What she lost can’t be replaced. But what she regained was agency.

Stories like hers remind us that ageism isn’t only about attitudes. It’s about access. Who gets believed? Who gets protected? Who gets options?

When we talk about aging in place, we have to ask: place for whom? When we talk about safety, we must include emotional and financial safety, not just physical walls and locks.

Ageism becomes most dangerous when it intersects with loss, poverty, and isolation, when people slip between systems that were never designed to see them clearly.

Dignity in later life should not depend on luck, resilience, or silence. It should be built into the way we design housing, respond to abuse, and support those navigating life’s hardest transitions alone.

If we want communities where people can age without fear, we have to look closely at where people like her almost disappear, and decide, collectively, that disappearing is no longer acceptable.