Gloria, 64, and Linda, who will be 59 on September 30, recently celebrated 33 years together. Twenty-eight years ago they opened a psychotherapy practice in Connecticut that has thrived. Both Gloria and Linda hold masters degrees in social work. In 1985, they purchased a home in Orleans on Cape Cod, where they have been members of the First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist Church for the last nine years. In addition, both women have been active in a variety of volunteer efforts on the Cape.
They have also faced health challenges, most recently when Linda underwent a double-hip replacement. The operation, as well as her debilitating condition in the four years leading up to it, caused Gloria to assume the role of Linda's primary care provider. The experience also underscored the additional steps they were forced to take, in an already stressful situation, with regard to ensuring that health care providers fully understood their relationship and Gloria's critical role in making all medical decisions when Linda was unable to do so herself.
Through the years, both have been active participants in their families' lives, serving as loving and supportive aunts to their nieces and nephews, and sharing in the responsibilities that came when their parents became ill and died. Nieces and nephews, and now grand nieces and nephews, continue to visit them on the Cape every summer.
As they face retirement, Gloria and Linda have grown increasingly concerned about any long-term health complications, as well as the penalties they face in passing on the business and home they have built when one of them dies. While they have taken all the financial, legal and health steps they can take as a lesbian couple, they still face financial uncertainty because of the enormous tax liabilities a surviving partner must assume without the protections of marriage.
They were married May 17,2004, and had a ceremony July 11th at First Parish Brewster Church with family and friends attending.
Gloria, 64, and Linda, who will be 59 on September 30, recently celebrated 33 years together. Twenty-eight years ago they opened a psychotherapy practice in Connecticut that has thrived. Both Gloria and Linda hold masters degrees in social work. In 1985, they purchased a home in Orleans on Cape Cod, where they have been members of the First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist Church for the last nine years. In addition, both women have been active in a variety of volunteer efforts on the Cape.