Our Bodies, Ourselves (124 page)

I have returned to art after many years. I am in conversation with the paint, paper, and the visual world, sometimes responding realistically and sometimes abstractly. At age 67, this inner urge to paint feels like a more authentic, core response than it did in the early days, and I know that it will sustain me for the rest of my life
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Dr. Gene Cohen, a geriatric psychiatrist who was the first chief of the Center on Aging at the National Institute of Mental Health and the first director of George Washington University's Center on Aging, Health & Humanities, was convinced that older people have untapped wells of creativity and skills. He called creative activities “chocolate for the aging brain.”
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Cohen conducted the first national longitudinal study on the impact of creativity, aging, and well-being. Sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the study demonstrated a positive link between creativity and healthy aging. Visit the National Center for Creative Aging (creative aging.org) to learn more.

A sixty-eight-year-old woman describes the steps she took after deciding she wanted to sing folk songs to her granddaughter. First, she had to learn how to play the guitar:

I went to the nearest music school, got a 28-year-old guitar teacher who plays jazz and blues, and told him I wanted to learn to play three chords. After many weeks he kept saying, “Aren't you bored?” He began to improvise with me as I played. From then on, he started teaching me twelve-bar blues and progressions and I moved to another level. I started playing in jazz clubs and joined a jazz group. I'm a beginner, but I love the process
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Those of us who grew up in the women's movement know we have more opportunities and possibilities before us than previous generations had at the same age. Are we as old as we look or as old as we feel? When does getting old even start? According to a 2009 Pew Research Center study,
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survey respondents age eighteen to twenty-nine believe that the average person becomes old at age sixty. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to seventy, and respondents age sixty-five and above say that the average person does not become old until turning seventy-four.

As for the age one feels, nearly half of all respondents age fifty and older say they feel at least ten years younger than their actual age. Among those age sixty-five to seventy-four, a full 16 percent say they feel at least twenty years younger than their age, and 34 percent say they feel ten to nineteen years younger.

One woman describes attitudes at her assisted living community:

We are so stuck on numbers! I don't think of aging in terms of numbers. People here up to 100 years old come to exercise classes. We don't use the word “old.” We think the eighties are young. If you're active and vital and life is interesting, this is what counts. It gives others courage
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Many of us are asking how we can live with passion, purpose, hope, and meaning until our last breath. We are charting new territory in our later years and creating new norms for aging. Through support groups and other collectives, we are finding ways to affirm our gifts and define our legacies. The more we can give voice to the full experience of our aging process without feeling “less than,” the more we can support one another to resist ageist attitudes. Our sense of ourselves changes in our older years, especially when we don't have familiar roles and we are balancing losses and gains and reinventing meaning and self-worth.

At 80, I'm more focused on being rather than doing. My outer world shrinks as my inner world expands. I embrace this stage of life, trying to accept new limitations and reflect on what enriches me, nourishes me, and what is the meaning of living now given I can't do and be the way I used to be
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Many women are working into their seventies and beyond. According to the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, the number of workers age fifty-five and older is projected to grow by more than 46 percent by 2016, more than five times as fast as the overall workforce. Some of us may not have planned to work that long, but financial security is rarely a given, especially in a volatile economy. It may be necessary to work to procure health care insurance for a spouse, even after reaching sixty-five and becoming eligible for Medicare. Or other family members may be out of work. We need to advocate for institutional policies that make flexible work options more available to older workers.

Retirement, even if welcomed, may lead to loss of status and structure, as well as loss of income. Yet patterns of retirement are changing as more of us seek meaningful activity throughout our lives. These later years can be a time for rewiring, renewal, and continued growth; we may be exploring entirely new fields or activities or pursuing volunteer opportunities that strengthen self-esteem, community connections, and a sense of purpose.

As we look for positive models for elderhood and think about what we can leave to future generations, consider building intentional connections with young people in your family or your community. A woman in her sixties describes being a grandmother to a new baby boy:

When I saw him, I immediately felt a visceral feeling of attachment and unconditional love for this baby. This is one of the gifts of aging. Loving him puts me in touch with aging in a new way. He pulls me into my future and a new chapter in my life. I feel rejuvenated
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Our wisdom and skills may be much needed by younger generations. Intergenerational programs that pair elders with younger women or with children who don't live close to their own grandmothers can give our spirits a lift and remind us that we have earned every wrinkle. Intergenerational connection may involve sharing family recipes, healing relationships with those we love, writing memoirs, researching and drafting family histories, and creating ethical wills that express our values and wisdom.

Programs such as the Intergenerational Center at Temple University (templeigc.org) provide national training and services for nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies interested in applying intergenerational strategies. Generations United (gu.org) also focuses on improving the lives of children, young people, and older people through intergenerational strategies, programs, and public policies.

One eighty-five-year-old woman who lives in a cohousing development says that the experience has enabled her and her now-deceased husband to age in an intergenerational community:

We have potlucks, community events, and engage in socially conscious activities. We recently housed a family from Uruguay for six months while their son got medical treatment. In this environment, I fully experience deaths, births, children growing up—all aspects of the life cycle which is not typical in our age-segregated society
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As we work toward building a society that celebrates and supports elderhood, fostering intergenerational relationships and participating in advocacy organizations are essential to building supportive networks. We can share, celebrate, and continue our work on behalf of social, political, and economic justice.

Going to the March for Women's Lives was one of the most thrilling and exciting things I have ever done in my eighty-five years. The local League of Women Voters had organized buses that would drive from our retirement community to
Washington, D.C., and then drive along slowly at the rear so that those of us who couldn't walk that far could participate. Being part of such an important event with all those young women was electrifying
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The growing numbers of aging women (including nearly 40 million baby-boomer women)
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could give us more clout as a political constituency if we organize or work for organizations that promote our issues. Government agencies such as the Office on Women's Health, the White House Council on Women and Girls, and the Department of Health and Human Services are paying more attention to us and to organizations that advocate on our behalf, such as the National Council of Women's Organizations (womens organizations.org).

Grassroots groups that welcome and encourage our voices include OWL, the Voice of Midlife and Older Women (owl-national.org), Raging Grannies International (raginggrannies.org), and the Gray Panthers (graypanthers.org) (
For more organizations
and website addresses).

© Christine Cupaiuolo

In the years to come, we need to build on our strength in numbers by creating and supporting programs that meet older women's needs, including:

Long-Term Care:
We need a continuous care system in which everyone receives care appropriate to her condition, provided promptly and efficiently in a setting of her choice and adjusted as needs change. We must keep pressuring policy makers and health institutions to support long-term care and the social services needed by an aging population.

Better care for older people requires better pay for all the providers who care for the chronically ill—including social workers, case managers, and sitters. It requires more social recognition of the role of family caregivers, some of whom have given up paid jobs to care for family members, and finding ways of paying them for providing long-term care.

Health Care:
Protecting and maintaining Medicare, as well as expanding access to medical care not covered under Medicare, is crucial to women's health. Health care reform moved us in the right direction, but we won't have full, comprehensive coverage unless the government plays a larger role and we move toward a single-payer health care system.

For now we need to expand Medicare coverage to women ages sixty-two to sixty-five, and we must press for more affordable health care insurance policies that cover what we really need and don't reduce us to poverty. We must also support states' efforts to expand eligibility for Medicaid and push for adequate funding.

Work-Family Balance:
The United States lacks policies that adequately support a reasonable work-family balance. We aren't paid for housework, child care, and eldercare, which keep some of us out of the paid workforce when our children are young and again when we are needed to help with aging parents and other family members. These gaps in paid work reduce our retirement benefits and pensions later on. We need to advocate for institutional policies that make flexible work options more available to older workers.

Expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act and passing a paid sick leave act is necessary so women can take time off for caregiving without risk of job loss. Those who quit jobs or take unpaid leave to care for a family member need some kind of insurance coverage to make up for lost income, now or in retirement. It is worth noting that the Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted in 1993, requires employers to grant twelve weeks of unpaid leave each year to care for a newborn or adopted child or a seriously ill family member, or to recover from one's own serious health condition. The law does not cover temporary or part-time workers and applies only to companies with more than fifty employees.