MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from excerpt from  From Deep Within  (Lewis)  Ben and Bella   My office was on the seventh floor. Practitioners who rented office space in the large brick building nicknamed it ‘therapy row’ since it was occupied by so many therapists.   My square office was to the right of the elevator. I had two black leather chairs that reclined, with a tinted brown glass table between them. In the corner was a plain pine desk with file drawers, a clock and a phone. Healthy green plants were placed around the office, and pictures of nameless Caribbean islands lined the four walls.   Bella, who described herself as transgendered, walked into my office. She was a mixed race black woman dressed to the T. The paisley dress she wore was a mix of red, blue and green. She wore striking red pumps. I noticed her feet were large and out of proportion to her small frame. She was transitioning from a man to a woman, and some of her feminine qualities were still muted....

Aging is not a footnote in my linguistic life—it’s the headline. In my seventh decade, I’ve noticed the shifts: slower retrieval, occasional delays, the need to kick out inappropriate words from other languages before the right one surfaces. But I’ve also noticed something else: the scaffolding holds . The foundation of more than a dozen languages, decades of professional memory work, and a lifetime of linguistic adaptation still supports new acquisition—even when the brain is 73 years old. 🧠 Memory Challenges and Multilingual Compensation Yes, recall is harder now. I feel the delay when I’m not in the right cultural context. I sometimes reach for a word and find three others from unrelated languages elbowing their way forward. But I also know how to filter, sort, and retrieve , because I’ve done it for decades. My memory banks are full—not just with vocabulary, but with patterns, structures, and strategies . That’s what makes new learning possible. 🌍 The Indonesian Challenge Lat...