Shaking It Off: Resilience in the Face of Aging’s Biggest Test
Florence + the Machine’s Shake It Off has been my quiet anthem these past months. Not because the challenges have been small, but because they’ve been relentless — and shaking them off has been the only way to keep moving forward.
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Systems That Work — and Those That Don’t
When we talk about aging in Maine, we’re not just talking about health or housing in isolation. We’re talking about systems — and whether they still work.
For too long, families have been left to navigate housing on one side and care on the other, as if they aren’t intertwined. The truth is simple: the future of aging depends on how we combine housing and care. One without the other doesn’t hold. Families know this. Older adults know this. But our systems, with antiquated leadership and outdated structures, still treat them as separate silos.
Resilience, for me, has meant standing inside those cracks, holding the weight of families who can’t afford for the system to keep failing.
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Unprecedented Times
Maine is aging faster than any other state. We’ve entered truly unprecedented territory — where the scale of need is colliding with a system that wasn’t built for this moment.
And yet, instead of collaboration, too often we get politics. Instead of innovation, we get hesitation. That kind of leadership might have worked a generation ago, but today it puts our stability at risk.
This is not about ideology. It’s about survival. It’s about whether families in this state can count on stability when the ground beneath them starts to shift.
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Shaking It Off, Building Ahead
Resilience isn’t just personal — it’s systemic. It means shaking off outdated ways of thinking and creating structures that carry people through the hardest chapters of life.
I believe Maine has what it takes to lead the nation in aging — but only if we stop clinging to leadership that belongs to another era. We need systems that are modern, nimble, and honest about the reality we face. Housing and care, together. Families and professionals, together. Maine, together.
That’s the work I’ve committed myself to, and that’s the resilience I believe we’re all going to need. Because this moment is bigger than any one person or party. It’s about whether Maine can rise to meet the age we’re living in.
