Spiritual Resiliency and Aging

Hope, Relationality, and the Creative Self

Janet Ramsey, Rosemary Blieszner, Janet L Ramsey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780895034113
• eBook ISBN: 9781351863667
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First Published in 2017. In this new book, Ramsey and Blieszner invite readers to renew their acquaintance with the eight women of the previous book and to meet eight men who, like the women, were nominated by their pastors as being people the pastors would want to speak with in times of spiritual crisis.

PART 1
The Hopeful Reality of Spiritually Resilient Aging

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Spiritual Resiliency and Aging

PREVIEWS OF HOPEFUL REALITY

Wilhelm is an 80-year-old German physician spending his last years quietly in an old university town (see Table A.1 for details on the study participants). His lifestyle contrasts sharply with popular images of successful retirement—a modest home, a preference for reading, music, and conversation. This thoughtful man does not mention golf, travel, or his financial portfolio. As his wife prepares coffee, he greets his visitors warmly, gazing off into a past that only he can see. “I am a witness of time,” he says. He sees many things, in fact: World War II, the Communist occupation of East Germany, and above all, the intersection of his medical vocation and faith.

As a young person, I said that I wanted to be a theologian. My foster mother said, “Oh, please no!” In those difficult times with Hitler, the church was persecuted. My father could have gone to a concentration camp. Then I selected the vocation of doctor, because it leads me to people. I could be together with people and could work for them. That was my path, my mission. And I believe that I bore being a doctor for that reason. I found it so good because I was allowed to work using my inner, religious grounding, from this wonderful perspective.

American woman Rebecca, at 93 the oldest person we interviewed, suffers from many of the physical challenges that can be frightening to aging persons. A stroke victim, she is legally blind, partially deaf, and confined to a reclining chair. Since 1935, this strong woman has lived in a small house immediately beside her country church in rural Virginia, attending it since it was first built.

I’m 93, and I don’t know what in the world I’m left here for. I do have a lot more problems than a lot of people, but I don’t have any pain. I don’t suffer at all. I feel like I’m lucky. I’m blessed, I guess. I still believe in God. I believe in Jesus Christ the Lord. I know he is my Savior, and I’m ready to die, I think—when my time comes!

Wilhelm and Rebecca are spiritually resilient older adults whose narratives are among the 16 stories embedded in the research project that inspired this book. Unlike some elders, whose stories are problem saturated and sad, reflecting their inadequate ability to achieve a sense of integrity (Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986), the stories of these older adults reflect hope, healthy personal relationships, and spirited creativity. The underlying theme of their narratives, spiritual resiliency, contrasts dramatically with the problematized view of growing old so prevalent in contemporary Western culture. Their stories are the objects for reflection in these pages because we, Ramsey and Blieszner, wish to participate in efforts to replace unhealthy and unbalanced visions of aging with ones that are hopeful, yet realistic.

AGING: PROBLEM OR PARADISE?

To me, old age is 15 years older than I am.

—B. M. Baruch (Kolatch, 1996, p.38)

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1961, p. 507)

As these quotations show, denial and irony frequently enter popular language when the topic is growing old. Denial, albeit if sometimes humorous, can occur in two different forms. People like Baruch prefer to visualize older adults as eternally older than are they themselves, at any given time. This preferred defense means responding to the inevitability of growing old by simply refusing to go there. Underlying this approach is the assumption that each older person is somehow other, and that growing old is to be avoided at all costs. By contrast, some people romanticize the aging process and steadfastly ignore the very real challenges and losses it brings. Like Shakespeare’s character Gratiano, they try to focus on the “mirth and laughter” the older years can bring. Implicit here is the myth of the “golden years,” of a paradise of wisdom and delight, available if only one can utilize anti-aging products, technology, financial planners or, for Gratiano, wine!

Americans, including popular writers and members of the media, have often vacillated between these two poles, sometimes ignoring or patronizing older adults and, at other times, implying that a certain product or treatment is sufficient to keep them content and happy. One recent example is an author/physician who wrote The Golden Years: A 12-Step Anti-Aging Plan for a Longer, Healthier, and Happier Life (Slobody, 1996) to suggest that, if Americans live healthy lifestyles, it is possible to reach, quite happily, 115 years. But anxiety about growing old is not easily conquered by reading the latest self-help book, and not all of us would even agree that living so long is an attractive goal. Certainly the physical and social problems of aging are not facilely dismissed with a little humorous advice, as jokes over the dinner table and late night TV suggest. What is the source of this burning desire to stay young? Is there a remedy for persons who are so very anxious about this completely natural process?

Clearly, denial is not the cure since sooner or later it becomes absurd; people “of a certain age” inevitably include all survivors. Worse, denial comes with a high social cost—ageism, a term that first emerged not in academia, but within the context of community action (Butler, 1975). This “set of beliefs about how people vary biologically as a result of the ageing process” (Bytheway, 2005, p. 339) not only results from, but contributes to, negative beliefs and attitudes toward older persons by both organizations and individuals. Too often, older adults are denied opportunities and resources, patronized, and labeled—all by people who would never make a racist or sexist remark. Ironically, ageism is the only form of prejudice that we create only to later become its victim (Ramsey, 2009).

Initially, the tendency to see older adults as perfect, or as perfectly happy, might be more attractive, since at first this view appears to be the opposite of ageism. However, romanticizing aging is simply another manifestation of the tendency to view older people as other, a kind of reverse ageism. Like denial, this defensive thinking cannot ultimately be reconciled with real-life experiences and offers no genuine hope. Contemplating Paul McCartney’s familiar song, When I’m 64, and longing for a more balanced and hopeful reflection of aging by popular artists, gerontologist Harry Moody (2009) wrote wistfully,

But science is one thing, attitudes are something quite different. “Sixty is the new Forty” goes a trendy slogan. But in my heart I know that’s not quite true, at least not when I get the latest reports on chemotherapy from friends of mine. Still, there is a balance between light and shadow in our lives and in the passing of the years. Neither the “well-derly” nor the “ill-derly” can be a full description of how things are. Maybe we need new songs about the undiscovered country of later life, songs that evoke both light and shadow. Paul McCartney, will you write us a new song like that? (pp. 1–2)

The field of gerontology, like most academic disciplines, typically is tended by persons who are themselves middle-aged or older and who have thus experienced both the fear of aging and the oppression that can result from overattention to chronological age. Although we certainly do not believe we can or should create a “gold standard” to define or measure successful aging (Baltes, 1997, p. 10), gerontologists are in a unique position to struggle against ageism (Bytheway, 2005). In writing this book, we strive to participate in that effort. Thus, we focus less on “the elderly,” (i.e., the other), visualized as a homogenous group, and more on both the actual challenges and promises of aging itself, particularly as aging intersects with questions of meaning and purpose. In our endeavor to balance reality and hopefulness, we make a move away from “idealized models and processes of ageing and toward an interest in how people talk about and act upon their age” (p. 344). We must begin with an honest acknowledging that looking at aging as a process is not a simple task.

Varying Responses to Adversity

Gerontologists have long acknowledged vast differences in quality of life among the older members of society. In fact, sustained well-being has become a cornerstone topic in aging research, albeit far from being fully understood (Langer, 2004). Despite methodological problems with measuring quality of life, this is a hopeful area of research with a firm empirical foundation. For example, Baltes and Baltes (1990) discovered that older adults can modify their goals and aspirations as one form of adapting to increasing frailty. But this remarkable ability to survive and grow after life crises, which can be sudden, gradual, or multiple, is not uniformly distributed across the population of older adults—even within one family, great diversity can occur. Who copes best and why? remains a crucial question, for if professionals can predict which elders will most successfully navigate life transitions, both prevention and treatment of illness and mental health problems can be improved.

Throughout history, older adults and their families have pondered the meaning of life when suffering not only presents itself, but accumulates. In some cultures, at some points in human history, this has led to solutions that appear extreme and cruel to modern eyes, such as compulsory suicide among preindustrial peoples, when older adults could no longer contribute to their own subsistence (Osgood & McIntosh, 1986). Most older people have concerns about becoming dependent and begin to anticipate their own death. These existential concerns can compel them to ponder questions about life’s purpose and meaning, a reflective process that, for many, occurs within the context of their own particular religious tradition and is facilitated by numinous experiences, such as involvement in the arts (McFadden & Ramsey, 2010).

As a nursing home chaplain, I (Ramsey) often wondered about precisely this issue. Often I began my day by visiting Jane, an 80-year-old woman who was almost deaf, had heart disease, and remained bedfast most of the time. She had to sell the house she loved, and her son had stolen her money before taking off to a distant state. Many of Jane’s friends had died before her, and she had outlived two husbands. Yet she always greeted me with a smile, asked about myfamily, and told me a joke. She was a great favorite in the care facility and, although naturally she had days when she felt sad and discouraged, Jane obviously loved life. She appeared to look forward to each day and enjoyed interacting with people. In contrast, when I went down the hall to visit Mary, few staff were to be found. At 78, this resident had no chronic pain or serious health problems; she was ambulatory and had sufficient financial resources to live in a private room. Her adult children were devoted and visited her often. But I had to force myself to stop in for a pastoral call because Mary was an unhappy, bitter, resentful person. Her narratives were filled with complaints, large and small, and she was the victim in every story she told.

While working on my doctorate in gerontology several years later, I had the opportunity to reflect on experiences with older persons like Jane and Mary. Reading articles or hearing lectures about significant factors that predict aging well, including health status, financial assets, and social support, I became dubious about the studies’ validity (their reliability was less in doubt), and I began to be curious about unexplained variability in coping. Clearly, Jane’s impressive strength was not related to physical health alone, since hers was poor, nor to financial well-being, since she had no money. Her capacity to get through terrible times, such as a relationship breech with her son, appeared to contradict the findings of many investigations. I remember my informal questioning, my asking Jane, “How did you manage to get through those difficult times?” and her automatic response, “I couldn’t have done it without the Lord.” I began to wonder if Jane’s strength might not be related, not to typical research variables, but to her determination to come to chapel services or to her dedication to reading her Bible. What about her spiritual life helped to equip her for not one, but many, personal losses? I decided to explore this issue in my doctoral dissertation and, in the process, created a term for Jane’s strength: spiritual resiliency. As the years have passed, as I have collaborated with Rosemary Blieszner, and as I have learned more about the strength of older people from my clinical practice as a marriage and family therapist, my initial question has shifted. If I were to leave academia and return to chaplaincy today, I would be less interested in analyzing Jane’s coping strategies and more interested in getting her to tell me a story.

Asking Different Questions

Part of the difficulty with the ageist, dichotomizing defenses described earlier in this chapter is that, over time, they lead to dead ends. Of course, there is an endpoint to all our lives. But emphases in traditional gerontology have, at times, compounded negative cultural tendencies through assessments of aging involving deficit-focused data, such as reports of dependency levels, lack of social support, and risk factors for problems (Langer, 2004). This focus has, in turn, brought about problem-saturated descriptions of growing old, leading to implicit and explicit assumptions such as, “All old people need professional care.” Recently, however, life span psychologists have begun asking questions that are more closely aligned with the stated needs of senior adults themselves. The Berlin group, for example, has used the term Sehnsuch—life longing—to inquire, how can my life, while not perfect, more closely reflect what I really long for in life? (Baltes, 2007).

Joining in this effort, and believing that unhelpful questions such as, how can I escape aging? or, how can I make my later years perfect? are problematic and naïve, we invite readers to join us in wondering, instead, about this more mature and reasonable question: In light of the realistic challenges associated with moving through the later years, what might it be like to live a hopeful life? Resisting the idea that there is a technological or a psychological solution for all challenges of aging (or even that all suffering is to be avoided), we also ask, what plots, themes, and personal myths emerge from the stories of resilient older persons? How can we evaluate their health and wholeness by listening to and reflecting on their life narratives? These questions, focusing on the process of aging from a narrative theory perspective, provide conceptual space and display respect for the infinite variety of human experience over time. They permit us to ask, after Bytheway (2005), “How do resilient older people view their own aging?”

Thus, resiliency and narrative theories have encouraged us to ask new questions in our research. Particularly over the last two decades (Van Breda, 2001), resiliency has evolved into a highly useful theory for holding in tension precisely the poles we wish to balance in this book—the challenging realities and the hopeful promises of growing old. Researchers and theorists working in this area, including those in the exciting new area called posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004), must, by definition, continually account for the significant challenges, both the everyday stresses and the less frequent traumas, that life brings us all. But they also explore the amazing (and not uncommon) ability to survive and grow as a result of such experiences.

A second useful lens, one that has the advantage of being at home in both theory and practice, is narrative theory (McAdams, 1993; Polkinghorne, 1988). Using this social construction approach, we have been able to ask deeper questions as we analyzed our data. We have been encouraged to wonder less about statistical probabilities determining resiliency (Pargament, 1997) and more about how resilient persons form personal myths that constitute, empower, and encourage them (McAdams, 1993). How do they strive to make sense of the important episodes in their lives—episodes that are mentioned repeatedly or with high emotion in their stories? Is there a natural fit, in these stories, between resiliency and narrative (Neimeyer, 2006)? We believe that, to address these questions, it is time to take the next step in aging and religion research by exploring the “grammar” of resiliency—the plots, narrative tones, and degrees of complexity in the stories of strong elders who clearly have capacity for resilience (see chapters 2 and 8 for more details on narrative theory).

Together with a life span perspective, these theories have given us lenses to use in exploring how people “talk about and act upon” the experience of growing old (Bytheway, 2005, p. 344) in light of both its realities and promises, maintaining balance between hope and destiny. The shift from searching for aging solutions and remedies toward a narrative interpretation of resiliency stories has led scholars, including the authors of this book, to some new emphases in gerontology. Consistent with the increasing interest in relationality in many disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, and theology, we stress the fluid, relational dimensions of human nature and the importance of self-narration for interpreting that experience. In light of these foci, the language created by scholars in resiliency and narrative work has helped us to reimage our task, so as to be less concerned with advising and solving, and more with listening and understanding. Overall, the strength-based perspectives of positive psychology (Snyder & Lopez, 2007; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004; Wolin & Wolin; 1993) have given us a way into and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: The Hopeful Reality of Spiritually Resilient Aging
• Part 2: The Interconnected Personhood of Spiritually Resilient Elders
• Part 3: Reflective Co-creation: The Dynamics of Spiritually Resilient Lives
• Appendix Research Methods
• References
• Index
• About the Authors