Age Discrimination

[Anonymous <no_email@fake.address>]

At age 53 I quit an executive position with a non profit because of harrassment by the board of directors.  I had experienced six-eight months of being followed, called at all hours, disruptions while at admin tasks, grantwriting, couseling clients, and was putting up with the board taking complaints from anonymous undermining gossips.  I quit one day as I realized the situation was escalating and I was not being given credit, nor was I compensated to become further exhausted.  My efforts were more successful than any director for 10 years. After about a year to heal me, I seriously began job hunting.  I was interviewed many times for many excellent positions. I felt most of the interviews went well. I began noticing a suble disinterest on the part of some of the interviewers in the process(groups doing the inter-viewing is now the norm.)  As I began to lose all my savings and stress began to show, two and one half years into this scenerio, I began getting turn down phone calls, rather than the rejection letters.  The state Job service staff were helpful, sympathetic, and voiced to me that I was fighting agism - the hardest discrimination to fight or prove. My resume showed impressive education and experience I was repeatedly told in interviews.  I went into a deep despair as personal troubles escalated along with joblessness.  I now have a meager social security disability pension that I am trying to live on.  This past fall I relocated to the southwest.  Upon relocating to this town, I connected with the non profit of my resume experience and have secured a short hour monthly position.  I am being treated with respect and dignity, my experience and years appreciated, for the first time in seven years.
Age discrimination is heartbreaking.  Yes, women's agencies and non profits are doing it, too.  These agencies want older women's experience and time, but as volunteer, not paid staff.
Thank you for letting me voice