Agents of Their Own Well-Being: Older Women and Memory-Work

The paper adopts the qualitative feminist method of Memory-Work in order to explore our collective experience of ageing after retirement. Following Freire (1970) we argue for a humanizing pedagogy wherein we control our own learning. We specifically argue for the voice of older women as agents of their own wellbeing. Over several years we documented our learning journey using memory triggers (such as: Who am I, now that I am over 65? ; Body maintenance; Fears; Being connected; Taking up a new challenge). What we found challenges the current script of ageing and social control that defines and limits who older women can be. For us, growing old is a privilege, full of richness. We reject the contemporary medical model of ageing in favor of a more nuanced model of both loss but also of personal growth in a changing landscape. Introduction The project reported here began almost by accident. During morning tea at a local café, one of the recently retired women complained about the difficulties of retirement, a feeling of loss (“Now I am just an old lady living alone with her cat”) and expressed frustration at the attitudes towards older women, particularly from the medical establishment. “Well, you should write about it” suggested another member. Writing is a lonely affair, but others expressed an interest in exploring the experience of ageing together, as we searched for meaning in our lives in retirement. Memory-Work had the potential for a collective exploration of both the negatives and the positives (if there were any) of ageing. When it was first proposed that Memory-Work would be the methodology for this project, most people were uncertain about its suitability, but were willing to give it a go. Onyx, Wexler, McCormick, Nicholson, Supit 137 What we got out of it was truly amazing. While some of us were used to writing in private journals and belonged to book clubs, this was the first time we wrote about our own experiences and thoughts and had a group discuss together what we had written. The process of writing for an audience became an experience in itself. As a group we embraced this writing and the sharing of our work as well as the interesting discussions that followed. We were delighted and surprised by our writing, about the universality that came out of our personal observation, and conversely how a universal concept can be intensely personal for each one of us. The initial group comprised six women and later, a second group was formed independently of the first. During the project, two dropped out for medical reasons. Ultimately, the two groups came together. So this paper reports some of the findings of our study. True to the foundations of Memory-Work, we are our own subjects. We are a group of retired, mostly professional women, working together over three years in our project. We were motivated by an interest in the process of ageing but also by a concern for the apparent overwhelming medicalization of ageing which focused on decline and efforts to delay that decline. We were concerned about the implications for the management of our own ageing. Much of the popular and academic literature seemed overly negative, and did not recognize positive experiences after retirement. We turned to Memory-Work as a potential method to interrogate our own experiences, but also to challenge existing stereotypes of ageing. We specifically argue for the voice of older women as agents of their own well-being. The Gerontology Perspective Decline models of ageing remain dominant in professional practice but are also implicit in much of gerontology research and theory. The decline in physiological and cognitive functioning with ageing is well documented, as evidenced in articles throughout the recent 2015 Handbook of Theories of Aging and other landmark research publications. These include Craik and Salthouse, (2011), Schaie (2015), Coulson, Marino, & Strang, (2005), Huisman, Poppelaars, van der Horst, Beekman, Brug, Tilburg & Deeg, (2011). For example, Craik & Salthouse (2011) maintain that ageing is associated with decline in cognitive function. Schaie (2015) reviewed the evidence of decline. He found that longitudinal studies generally find less behavioral decrement than would be suggested by cross-sectional data. That is, individuals tend to maintain relatively constant capacity until a final rapid decline, which occurs at various ages (Huisman et al, 2011). There is a relatively small average decline in the 60s with an increasingly steep, average decrement for each successive decade (Schaie, 2015, p 59). Nonetheless, there is no expectation from these studies that at least for some cohorts there may actually be an increase in functioning. While noting that some groups of individuals show greater or lesser decline, there was no mention of cognitive or personal growth. Rowe & Kahn’s Agents of Our Own Well-Being 138 (1997) biomedically oriented “successful” ageing model stresses the avoidance of disease and disability, maintaining high mental and physical functioning, and remaining socially engaged. The emphasis is on medical interventions. Virtually all studies continue to focus on attrition and strategies to delay decline. This is true even in studies which show that cognitive capacity can be maintained, such as Coulson et al (2005) who demonstrated that older people were able to learn and retain cognitively challenging concepts. The conclusion for this finding was the hope that such learning together with a healthy life style could delay the onset of dementia. The emphasis is on delaying a declining future rather than the satisfaction that older people may derive from stimulation and new learning. It is certainly understandable that the medical fraternity should be overwhelmingly concerned with dementia as the most common ailment in older age groups and a major cause of serious decline. Any research that provides clues to preventing or delaying the onset of dementia is very welcome. But this accounts for a fraction of the ageing experience. The majority of people at least in modern societies can expect a good twenty years or more during retirement, of moderately good health and cognitive capacity. Little is said of these people or of the possibility for personal growth. While the gerontology literature was not reassuring, we turned our search towards concepts of lifelong learning and the potential there to provide a more positive take on ageing. The literature on lifelong learning provided evidence of the rich life histories and experience of older adults. We could connect with this literature as we have been involved in lifelong learning for most of our lives. A Lifelong Learning Perspective Implicit in the term lifelong learning is the assumption that the need to learn is universal and encompasses all ages and stages of human existence in the search for meaning. Within the gerontology literature, very few, such as Nimrod (2008) and Rajan & Rajan (2017) seriously explore the extent to which older people take up new, challenging activities. However, some of the lifelong learning literature does agree that ageing entails a great deal of new learning, engaging in new “careers” including the exploration of creative arts activities. The concept of “lifelong learning” appears to be far more appropriate in describing the ageing experience of at least some cohorts of older people (Findsen, 2005; Manheimer, 2008). A look at the literature on lifelong learning however does not always reflect the presence of this basic human need in older adults. Withnall (2010) and Findsen & Formosa (2011) have both reviewed the history of lifelong learning and point out that it was initially a program to extend the notion of learning to older individuals who were still working. It was a way to keep the work force up to date in technological and information changes and mainly encompassed courses within Onyx, Wexler, McCormick, Nicholson, Supit 139 institutions or work places. Only in later decades when faced with a burgeoning retired population was lifelong learning extended and applied to older adults. Manheimer (2008) reviews the rapid expansion of education programs for older learners. From a policy perspective, these programs are generally intended to maintain a sense of purpose among the ageing population, to support wellbeing and healthy activities in order to reduce levels of institutionalisation and ultimately reduce health costs. Learning in later life has now been co-opted by public policy discussions (Findsen & Formosa, 2011). From a government policy perspective these are instrumental motives with the explicit focus on achieving a specific outcome. Withnall criticizes the field of educational gerontology for addressing the needs of the providers of later life education rather than the learners themselves. However, many programs are driven by grass roots organisations rather than government policy. Such programs tend to focus on expressive or intrinsic motives, learning for its own sake, deepening a sense of meaning. They may focus on gaining insight into one’s past, developing appreciation for art or music or literature, finding a voice, seeking inner calm and insight. Nonetheless, almost all adult learning programs maintain traditional pedagogical methods involving expert-led, performance orientated lectures. The expert provides and the learner passively receives. These programs are increasingly market driven, requiring payment for services provided (Sheridan, 2007). The older learner is allowed little autonomy, and even less capacity to share with others in the process of learning itself. Both Findsen & Formosa (2011) and Withnall (2010) acknowledge that the voices of older people are curiously lacking in the research of late life learning and therefore in the planning of programs for the elderly. Withnall’s (2010) research centered around the needs of the elderly themselves and used focus groups to tease out some of the sal