Meet Your Neighbor – January 2025

    Ask 91-year-old Eartha Newsong the secret to her good health and the spritely activist and former nun doesn’t miss a beat.
    “Not having kids!” she immediately exclaimed.
    Then she got serious.
    “I was a nurse midwife overseas in Pakistan for 10 and a half years, so I had my birthing experience,” she said. “I groaned and moaned with the women as they were in labor. The babies I delivered into my own hands were like my little babies. I had all my maternal desires met.”
    Newsong grew up in Farmington, Connecticut, where her family of six belonged to a small Episcopalian Church. But she was fascinated by nuns from an early age.
    “I had always been inspired by nuns,” she said. “Our home was rented out in the summers to the Sisters of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. It was a beautiful location and they came to have a vacation while our family went to Cape Cod. I met the sisters and I loved them right away. They were full of fun. They were warm, loving people. And they were nurses.
    “I actually made vows privately in my own prayers to be a nun when I was 12.”
    Newsong converted to Catholicism at 21, while in nursing school, and took her vows as a nun five years later.
    “They didn’t want to take me as a nun so soon after I became a Catholic, so they told me to go out and have a normal social life,” she said. “I had boyfriends, and a couple of them wanted to get married, but I wasn’t interested. I had bigger ideas.
    “I went to Europe with some friends, and I began to open my eyes to all there was out there. Then I emigrated to Scotland. And what do you know? The first thing I see is a group of nuns that I fell in love with. That was love at first sight, without a doubt.
    “That’s the order I joined. And as soon as I made my vows, I was sent to Pakistan where I did all my work.”
    Newsong was in Pakistan over the course of two wars with India. The culture shock upon arriving was enormous – everything from the temperature to the food to the dramatically different standard of living. But Newsong adapted quickly – and thrived.
    “Once I learned their language, I felt so comfortable with them. They were the warmest people,” she said. “They were all refugees and 98% of them were Muslim. There is this tremendous hospitality in their culture that just nurtures you.”
    Newsong’s time in Pakistan gave her a great sense of purpose, and also joy.
    “I got up every day and I had something worthwhile to do,” she said. “We had people coming in from outlying villages in desperate, desperate situations. You would walk out the door and there was wall-to-wall humanity needing help.”
    Eventually, Newsong’s sense of purpose would come into conflict with her religious doctrine – specifically with regards to reproductive rights.
    “Every woman who came to the clinic clasped their hands in prayer, saying, ‘Please, I want birth control. Please help me,’” she said. “I had women who were pregnant every two years without fail and they were begging for help.
    “The Roman Catholic Church is against any artificial contraceptives. They only allow ‘natural’ birth control, or, as it’s called, Catholic Roulette.”
    An off-site World Health Organization program taught the nurses all about birth control and sent them back to their hospitals with boxes of condoms, IUDs and other supplies that Newsong kept under her bed.
    “I was wearing the habit, but teaching these women about birth control. I considered that my job and my duty,” she said. “My mind had changed and I no longer agreed with the Catholic church. I became very strong on that.
    “It’s a matter of justice. These women were begging me for help. I could not refuse them.”
    Newsong was becoming frustrated with the church, and her elderly mother needed her, so she returned to the United States in 1974. She left the nuns soon after, officially receiving a dispensation from her vows from the Vatican.
    At this stage in her life, she’d been known by two different names: she’d been born as Susan Sanborn and given the name Mary Helena Suzanne by the Franciscan Order of Nuns. But she was never truly comfortable with either name. So finally, she chose her own: Eartha, to represent the Earth (and because she admired Eartha Kitt), and Newsong, because the hymns in church reminded her she was singing new songs and living a new life.
    Newsong worked in a variety of healthcare jobs until she retired in 1998.
    But just because she left her religious order doesn’t mean she left her calling – “to do as much good for other people as I possibly could.”
    These days, Newsong is a longtime and treasured member of the Orinda Community Church, located across the street from her home at Orinda Senior Village. Her modest apartment is as colorful and inspiring as Eartha herself. Paintings and prints of famous artists adorn the walls, abstract, hand-painted chairs beckon visitors to sit and stay awhile, and a bulletin board exhibits an array of global activists whom Newsong admires.
    At church, she is on the Mercy and Justice Committee, which helps fund social justice organizations in need. Newsong was also instrumental in adopting the Winter Nights Shelter program at the Orinda Community Church, where they take turns with other local churches housing homeless during the cold months.
    She campaigned for affordable housing in Orinda and has volunteered for many other causes over the years. Newsong was also the first official coordinator of the Seniors Around Town program – an endeavor she took on in 2005 at the age of 72.
    Her latest passion project was participating in “Birds for Gaza,” in which local churches created colorful paper birds with the names of Gazan children who had been killed since Oct. 7, and then displayed them on their walls to raise awareness.
    “Eartha is my favorite person in the world,” her pastor, Elizabeth Robinson, said. “She’s a complete delight. Eartha speaks in a blunt and fearless way about controversial issues – with love and generosity. Her faith is so genuine and energetic, that it’s a model for the rest of us.”