Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L submission: Seniors' needs

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 11, 2006, at 5:33 PM, Lisa Anthony wrote:

>  We need a focus on issues of becoming
> older: conscious aging, the meaning of "elderhood", and
> social/intellectual/physical/spiritual needs and development (e.g.
> discussion groups, classes, co-care issues, to name a few).

There is also the added need of not being viewed as everyone's mother 
all the time. When the majority of the people in the community are 
literally young enough to be your children, they act like your children 
and expect you to act like a parent. The ability to be viewed as a peer 
and to be responded to as an equal decreases with age.

People transfer to you all their conflicts with their own mothers and 
expect you to be the all giving, never complaining person they wished 
their own mothers were. After all this is their new perfect life, 
right? Their family of choice.

This means they view everything you say as having the authority of 
parents. An expression of personal opinion becomes viewed as binding 
law and a condition for continued sustenance.

As a 60-something, you wake up to realize that the tough meeting last 
night was not the best way to plan the Thanksgiving dinner or how much 
people are willing to pay for organic free range turkey but about 
adolescent rebellion. Only now you have not two but thirty or forty 
people who fit the age (and behaviour) expectations of "children."

I recently found myself longing for women's consciousness raising 
groups, only this time an elder consciousness raising group. Until the 
1960s, the only time that women could be viewed as themselves, not as 
fulling a role in relation to someone else, was when they were alone in 
a room -- no men and no children. Many women found this very difficult 
unless it was a Tupperware party where they were (ostensibly) thinking 
about needs of men and children.

Since being an elder is a relatively new phenomenon, it is uncharted 
territory and most of us have no more idea how no more idea how to be 
it than most women knew how to be anything other than mothers or wives 
or daughters in he past. Withdrawing to a place where we can just be is 
probably a much greater draw than grab bars.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org