Aspiration

A hope or ambition of achieving something

Is there an age when our dreams diminish or disappear?  Or do we get to a time in our lives when we stop dreaming because that time has passed?  Do we get new dreams as we get older?  Do we continue to have aspirations?  If we need support to achieve these, do the people around us recognise them?

Community Circles supports people to stay connected to the things that matter to them, whether that’s something they’ve always done or a desire to try something new.

The purpose of Bernard’s Community Circle is to keep him connected to his love of poetry and we had our first circle meeting last week.  Throughout his life Bernard has written poetry about personal experiences, a cathartic process of exploring feelings and a richness of insights.  His poetry has many layers and we enjoy several readings to uncover the nuances in his writings.

Bernard is living with dementia but this hasn’t dampened his love for poetry, his expressive use of language and great conversation or his dream to see his poetry in print.

Sean, who is matched as the facilitator for Bernard’s circle also has a love of poetry.

At our first circle meeting we enjoyed chatting with Bernard and his son John about his writing, learning about his love of language, his sometimes lengthy search for the right word for a poem and also his desire to share his poetry with a wider audience.

We chatted through a variety of ideas to help make this happen.

To support Bernard to publish his poetry, John is collating the poems together, Sean is reading through to put into themes and over the next few circle meetings we’ll be exploring with Bernard which are favourites and how to go about sharing them.

Our ideas for sharing included a blog page or an E-book with a future plan to have a printed version.  We’re grateful to Claire at HSA Press for her advice and support about ebooks and help to make this happen.

It’s really exciting being involved in supporting Bernard to achieve his dream; good conversation around a shared interest and reaching out among our own networks for advice can lead to great things.  After the meeting, John said this was the most engaged he had seen his Dad for a while, a renewed energy from reigniting his passion.