Astrid Lindstrom’s Words of Honor
By Melissa Karen Sances | Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography
Published in Northampton Living June 2025
Astrid Lindstrom was always an inspired writer. While in elementary school in Gambier, Ohio, a small town populated by one thousand people, she felt compelled to organize a poetry anthology. “I was the editor,” says Lindstrom, now a retired teacher and Northampton resident who recently published a memoir about love and loss. Under her tutelage, her young peers – the neighborhood kids – copied their poems by hand, illustrated them, and sold each anthology booklet for 25 cents to interested neighbors.
Lindstrom didn’t know it at the time, but one of those neighbors, John Crowe Ransom, was a well-regarded poet and faculty member at nearby Kenyon College, where her father was a math professor and her mother worked as a librarian. Ransom gave Lindstrom a whopping dollar for a copy of her anthology. “When I went home and told my parents,” she says, “their mouths dropped open.”
Her success prompted her to consider her future. While lying on her belly in the grass that summer, she made a list of pros of cons. Either she would be a famous mathematician like her dad, or she would be a famous poet. For now, all she knew was that both paths had their advantages. In the meantime, she started playing the violin at age nine, joining the high school orchestra and the Kenyon College String Ensemble. She graduated from high school as the class salutatorian and headed off to Mount Holyoke College, where she suddenly felt out of her depth.
“I was used to being in the top of my class, as were most Mount Holyoke students,” she explains. “But suddenly I was surrounded by women at the top of much better-quality classes.” Despite a professor’s suggestion that she take a writing class, she demurred. It wasn’t until she started teaching that she felt comfortable writing again – but only in the service of helping her student writers, first in high schools in central and eastern Massachusetts, and later in middle schools in Southwick, Holyoke and Springfield. She especially loved encouraging young people to write creatively.
As a lesbian, Lindstrom also felt strongly about being “out” in the classroom, because not many of her students felt that they could be. In 2006 she marched in the Pride parade in Northampton – and ended up on the front page of the “Daily Hampshire Gazette.” This cost her her job, but was well worth it: “In every case when I lost a job, really positive things came out of it.”
One year while marching in Boston, she heard a voice in the crowd calling for “Miss Lindstrom.” Her former student found her afterwards on the Boston Common and threw his arms around her. He had been living with a conservative Christian grandmother who disapproved of his homosexuality. “You saved my life,” he told his former teacher.
In 2003 Lindstrom met her partner Cece through a mutual friend. They married in 2009, with the support of Lindstrom’s adult son and daughter from her first marriage and Cece’s two adult children. A few years later, Jonah, a Shetland Sheepdog mix, joined the couple.
Sadly, Cece was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014. Lindstrom and Jonah dutifully visited her at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, where Jonah was an instant hit, walking on a leash while Cece maneuvered in her walker, and later, after training with Bright Spot Therapy Dogs, snuggling with other patients.
Cecelia: A Memoir of Lesbian Love and Loss (excerpt)
What she did know was that we had tickets to the gala women’s dance at the Hotel Northampton Saturday night. At 2:00 I took her to our room there. On a round, wooden table, was the bouquet of pinkish-lavender cool water roses arranged with sprigs of heather that I’d ordered for Cece. We played double solitaire on the bed before dressing up for a steak and shrimp dinner at Wiggins Tavern. Cece wore a stunning black velvet pantsuit with a red-and-black-checked scarf. Before the dance, I gave her her fourth valentine, along with the silver and amethyst pinky ring of hers that she’d let me wear ever since she’d lost the gold signet ring that I’d lent her. With this ring as her engagement ring, I asked if she’d marry me. Though her eyes were smiling, her answer was “Maybe.” “Maybe?” I repeated incredulously. “Probably!” was her amended answer. “Probably?” I couldn’t help asking, but then I let it go. I realized I’d caught her off guard. Hand in hand, we walked downstairs to the ballroom. With its crystal chandeliers and tuxedoed staff, it was an elegant place to dance. By midnight we retired to our lovely room.
When Cece passed away in 2017, Lindstrom began writing her first memoir, “Cecilia: A Memoir of Lesbian Love and Loss.” Just as she did as a child, she wrote in longhand, this time while sitting at her dining room table and listening to classical music. “Writing was intensely therapeutic,” she says. “It gave structure to my days and a way for me to work through my grief.” The book has been praised as being as much about life as it is about death.
Eventually, Lindstrom met her current partner, Beth, through Mass Match, a local, personalized dating service. On their first outing, they met up at Smith College and walked along the Mill River with Jonah. Beth, who works for the United Arc, has three adult children and loves dogs. Like Lindstrom, she lost her former partner to cancer.
Lindstrom’s family has expanded to include Katja, a shy Russian Blue. In her free time, she has been learning the fiddle and she ushers for Valley Classical Concerts and the Arcadia Players. She’s also a devout contra dancer.
And a newly published author. Her memoir was released in 2023. Read an excerpt here, or hear her read on June 26 at the Longmeadow Adult Center at 6:45 p.m. Learn more at astridlindstrom.net.
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