One of my favorite parts of the white paper about the Emerging Elder that I’ve cited this week is the stories the academics present. Here are a couple of stories included in the paper:
Margalit, age 55, recently launched her youngest child to college. She requested therapy to manage a sense of foreboding and diminishing self-worth. She realized that in recent years she had focused all of her attention on her family challenges, which included the care of her father as he struggled with progression of a dementing illness for 8 years, a child with special needs who required adjunctive therapies throughout her schooling, and a spouse who had been unemployed since the 2008 recession. She recognized that throughout these challenges she diverted attention from her own needs. She was embarrassed that she no longer “looked pretty,” and ashamed that this seemed important. She became acutely aware that “aging was coming to get her.” She stated clearly that she simply did not know how to approach and accept being an “older” woman.
Elsa, age 63, felt isolated and alone. Recently widowed, she was further restricted by the pandemic of 2020. She faced an uncharted future with less confidence in herself. This once politically and socially active woman expressed great concern and increased anxiety about not being able to envision her future. She wondered if the quarantine required in response to COVID-19 was a metaphor for the anticipated isolation and invisibility she feared.
Our stories can both liberate and incarcerate, especially when it comes to age. Too often, in western society, we adopt the ageist story lines that tell us, “I’m too old to learn a foreign language” or “My best years are behind me.” The authors of this paper write, “It is the individual’s perception of reaching the threshold to old age that characterizes Emerging Elderhood.” It’s a time ripe for confusion, especially since our roles are not as age-synced as they used to be. At 64, I have sons – 13 and 10 – while friends of mine have grandchildren that are the same age, so the aging process isn’t purely chronological, it’s also psychological and role-based. “Comparing ourselves to others, so common during earlier points in the life cycle, is more challenging given the widespread heterogeneity of this period.”
The authors continue, “Emerging Elderhood is proposed as a time beyond Midlife, during which adults appear to share some of these same issues as Emerging Adults, particularly the anxiety and insecurity connected to the loss of the direction afforded by previous responsibilities and roles.” Early in MEA’s history, we embraced Yale’s Becca Levy’s research which showed that mid-lifers who shift their mindset (and stories) about midlife from a negative to a positive gain seven and a half years of additional life. At this age, how do we reconcile between past accomplishments and future possibilities, giving equal weight to each?
What stories are you telling yourself about your aging process? If you were to write a children’s book about your life past, present and future that starts with “Once Upon a Time, there was a child named _______,” how might that story unfold and what are the central themes of this story that lead to a happy ending?
-Chip