Upworthy · 251 days ago

A 92-yr-old Former Ballet Dancer with Dementia Wrote This Achingly Beautiful Poem About Aging

Against the fading shadows of memory, poetry emerges as a beacon, revealing that even the constraints of dementia cannot dim the human spirit's innate creativity. A 92-year-old former ballet dancer, co-writing with her child, crafted a poem that defies the erasure of her cognitive decline. Her words, "I am still a dancer made of song," capture the timeless soul beneath layers of age and illness. This phenomenon echoes the larger truth that poetry's essence lies in its ability to restore voice and unlock the hidden self, a truth recognized by Joseph Fasano and the Alzheimer's Poetry Project. Both highlight that when given the right prompts, the young and the old, the clear-minded and the clouded, can all find their expression in the profound simplicity of poetry.