NYC is complex and mixed city, a city known for its diversity of race, religion, and people from all over the world. It’s a city that’s constantly reinventing itself and where young people migrate to in search of the perfect and affordable neighborhood. There is a rediscovering of forgotten ones, yet, only to make them hip and eventually unaffordable, creating a cycle of search, flourish and moving on.

Within this city’s cycle, there is a demographic of women over 65 that has been able to remain unperturbed, and they’ve been observers of the city’s constant change. They created homes without families and they’ve been able to age in place. Many of them inhabit rent controlled apartments and that’s where they’ve lived for the past 30 or 40 years. Most of them live in walk-up units and due to aches and pains of aging they sometimes have difficulty leaving their homes. All of these women have surrounded themselves by strong friendships and developed tight knit communities. They never felt alone or “family-less”, however, their friends are also aging and the support network they’ve relied on just keeps getting smaller.

I became intrigued by the lives of these women. I see myself in them. I’m aging in a foreign country that has become my home and I’ve been able to develop strong friendships comparable to the ones back home. But, as I age in this foreign place, the dilemma of aging alone hits hard and I can’t help but wonder if by wanting a family of my own I’m just trying to fix an unknown future. Getting to know these women and seeing their homes, I see women comfortable with who they are and the decisions they’ve made. Meeting them has taught me that whatever I decide it will be OK. Home is many things but ultimately is what we do with the space we inhabit and how we make those spaces our own. Through these strong women I have found strength in myself too, to embrace what remains unknown.