Living Well as You Age: Turning Challenges into Opportunities

By Junietta McCall and Cliff Dempster

Many middle-aged and elderly people find that their quality of life goes down as they get older. But it doesnt have to be that way.

One is never too old to boost wellness, build relationships with others, and hone personal faithno matter what the circumstances, according to authors Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min. and Clifford R. Dempster, Ph.D.

In this guidebook to making the most out of later years, they go beyond sharing word-of-mouth wisdom and reveal research that will help you cultivate essential skills so you can manage the changes that come with preparing for retirement and growing older.

The interactive journey they lead you on focuses on mind, body, and spirit. Throughout it, youll participate in numerous exercises and hear suggestions that have helped people over the age of fifty-five enjoy a higher quality of life.

McCall and Dempster, both with many years of experience in health care, draw on their personal experiences in making the transition to retirement to show how to confront its challenges and capitalize on its opportunities. With a little determination and the knowledge in this book, youll enjoy Living Well as You Age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491789667

Junietta McCall

Junietta Baker McCall D. Min. is a retired pastoral-psychotherapist and the author of five books focusing on hospital ministry, bereavement, and building hope. Clifford R. Dempster Ph.D. is a retired Army officer and a semiretired psychologist interested in recovery from trauma and mental health issues.

Book preview

Living Well

as

as You Age

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min. and Clifford R. Dempster, PhD.

41005.png

Living Well as You Age

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Copyright © 2016 Junietta McCall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8920-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8921-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8966-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903069

iUniverse rev. date: 02/25/2016

To our families and friends

About the Authors

Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min, is the previous director of pastoral psychotherapy and counseling education at Beverly Hospital, Beverly, Massachusetts. For twenty-two years she served as director of pastoral services at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord. A retired licensed pastoral psychotherapist, Diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, she is the author of Grief Education for Caregivers of the Elderly; A Practical Guide to Hospital Ministry; Bereavement Counseling: Pastoral Care for Complicated Grieving; Building Hope During Challenging Times; and With Wings Widespread, Reflections on Life and Hospital Ministry. Dr. McCall has served as adjunct faculty member in pastoral counseling at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts and as associate pastor of South Congregational Church in Concord

Clifford R. Dempster PhD. grew up in the Pacific Northwest and still calls Oregon home. After completing his Ph. D in Psychology at the University of Montana, he returned to Active Duty as an Army Officer, and retired after 20 years of service. Cliff has a particular interest in trauma related disorders and responding creatively to issues regarding mental health and illness. His last full time employment was at New Hampshire Hospital, an Acute Psychiatric Facility, where he and June frequently collaborated in providing family and group therapy. Medical issues led to his retirement in the summer of 2011, but Cliff continues to consult for a local Hospital Emergency Department.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Our Place In The Aging Process

Chapter 2 Starting Points

Chapter 3 Befriending Change

Chapter 4 Attention, Mindfulness And Stress

Chapter 5 Resiliency And The Dis-Eases In Old Age

Chapter 6 Pursuing Perfection

Chapter 7 A Bearable Lightness

Chapter 8 Living Resourcefully

Chapter 9 Working Toward Contentment

Chapter 10 Creativity: Moving Beyond Coping And Adapting

Chapter 11 Maintaining A Positive Spiritual Life

Chapter 12 Saying Hello And Goodbye

Chapter 13 Nearing The Finish Line

Chapter 14 Letting Them Know How Much You Love Them

Chapter 15 Telling Stories And Finding Inspiration

Chapter 16 All Will Be Well

Chapter 17 Strings And Things

End Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

The urge to write seems to be something that grows with time, experience and practice. For this growth to happen multiple sources of nourishment are essential. In this current effort I have been fortunate to find ample resources both rich in quality and profound in nature.

As I have journeyed these past few years from work to retirement I have had the support and encouragement of my sons Seth and Jeremiah, their wives, Olivia and Sheri, and my grandsons Tyler, Dylan, Cameron, and Kevin. I have also had the love and support of my husband John who doesn’t mind being interrupted by the numerous ‘brilliant’ ideas that come into my head and heart.

There also remain within me numerous voices from my past, my extended family and friends, colleagues, students, parishioners, patients, residents and clients. Through the writing process an amazing number of these people and their stories came back to me, guiding me as I have been experiencing and writing this current piece on aging.

Junietta Baker McCall, D. Min.

In the beginning, I wish to acknowledge my debt of gratitude for the support and caring I receive from my wife, Sarah and my children, step-children, grandchildren and their significant others.

It has been over 40 years since I have been able to luxuriate in that warm and nurturing atmosphere which was grad school, both at Oregon State University, and at the University of Montana. There I was fortunate to learn from a long list of excellent professors who took a direct interest in me and my career. In particular I thank the late C. K. Smith, my principal undergraduate history professor, who had much to do with encouraging the necessary habits of scholarship. Later on, after ground school in the army, Dr. Charles Allen is the person who taught me how to take good notes…or at least usable notes that were ‘good enough.’ I remembered them both with gratitude as I was writing and editing this book.

Next I wish to extend my gratitude to my fellow soldiers - especially those who from early 1983 had my back. They also managed to express skepticism in a kind and open way that promoted reflection and growth in many areas!

Then I wish to thank the students who often taught me more than I probably taught them. In some cases I have talked through ideas about my current writing project with them and received valuable feedback.

Finally, and most important of all, a thank you goes to the patients I have served. They too have taught me and kept faith in me during the challenging times in their lives.

Clifford R. Dempster, PhD.

Introduction

Living Well as You Age is a book filled with hope and promise and based on the wisdom gained by its authors who have worked diligently to understand the aging process as it has been experienced by countless others who have come to them for help over the years. But it does not stop there. For growing old is everyone’s story, and in this case, the process of aging has been happening to us as we have been writing.

The Story Behind the Story

Co-authoring this piece has made great sense since we have worked together for a number of years in a clinical setting. The vicissitudes of age and retirement led June to move through part time work to a more or less final retirement. Cliff, however, continues to work part time declaring that there may be great doubt as to how ‘final’ any retirement may be this side of the grave!

In any event, it came to pass that both retired the same week. That, we felt, was synchronicity at its most decisive, and certainly no mere coincidence! So it was that, following this momentous week, both did a variety of things, mostly getting used to being at home rather than at work. Both found an urge to de-clutter. Both wondered how life would proceed as the decades moved forward. Both began reading about aging, reflecting on changes and writing thoughts and ideas on their computers. Both thought a book about aging would be a good resource. Still, it did not take long to discover that neither of us knew enough about being retired let alone living well while growing old. But here we were - retired (sort of, mostly) and definitely adding years to our ages.

However, we agreed on some things. We wanted to continue to find meaning and purpose in our older years. Like many baby boomers, we were confident that we could find concrete and practical help. We were encouraged about learning something new. We looked forward to turning to colleagues, friends and community, and to our beliefs and skills for inspiration.

We also knew that we would not find one concise blueprint for how to retire and age. However, that has not deterred us. Rather we have seen this process as a personal and professional challenge. After all, we consider ourselves to be somewhat resilient and really do believe that we, and others, can learn to increase our resilience as we age with a consequent sense of greater well being.

A Beginning Question and Assumption

Living Well as You Age is meant to be helpful to people who are over sixty; to families with aging relatives and friends; and to professionals who are working with older persons.

In its current form, this work is a bit of a patchwork quilt, where each piece is directed ultimately toward the principal theme of aging well. Ultimately, we are all faced with choices in life, to survive or to thrive, to be overwhelmed and completely undone by tragedy, or to retain an ability to observe and appreciate the ironies, absurdities, and blessings one finds in living. It is our hope that you will find within this offering some useful ideas and concepts! Aging, after all, is a shared human experience.

To this end, our working question can be stated simply:

What can we do to increase wellness in our latter years?

This question is posed with a companion assumption about being old:

One is never too old, or challenged, to learn how to grow

in personal sense of wellness; increased relational satisfaction;

and spiritual strength built on some kind of treasuring of heritage,

universal and/or personal faith, and meaningful hope;

as relates to passage of time and personal circumstances.

An Initial Review of Current Needs and Resources

When we started thinking about writing a book about aging there didn’t seem to be many practical books in print. At least they didn’t appeal to our minds, bodies and spirits! What we found did not seem to be very useful and comprehensive given our own situations and the experiences of those who had sought our help in the past. Thus, it seemed that there was a genuine need for such a resource, given that people are living longer in general and there are more and more of us in the category of old age.

However, even though this was the rationale that gave impetus to our writing start, there are some good recent resources and more research about aging is now available. Yet the field remains open. Families no longer tend to live with their elders as this generational living situation is no longer the norm. Those of us in our sixties and early seventies have not necessarily grown up in close proximity to those growing older. Our models have been limited in print and in cultural reality. Plus our society has not developed enough resources to meet the varied needs of an aging population that is better informed and has increased motivation to grow, learn, and live well.

It is this population who has no desire to retire and go home and lie on the couch. Nor are we going to be satisfied with trying to appear young and amusing ourselves with distractions in which we find little meaning or purpose; cannot afford; or don’t have the ability to do. Today’s elders are not as easily seduced by polarities that were often offered in the past. Today’s elders are more informed in a general sense; but not necessarily in touch with specific ways to plan and execute strategies for making changes that are likely to be effective.

Instead of being idealistic, this book focuses on weaving together realistic experiences of those over sixty; reviewing and creating strong conceptual foundations using models and interventions that have a proven track record; and troubleshooting what we believe to be strengths and challenges that tend to occur as we journey from sixty to one hundred. By using this approach, the reader will hopefully find this text to be a resource for personal and professional reflection; a guide to possibilities and the development of potential; and a resource to return to again and again.

Now Back to the Story Behind the Story

After a full month of retirement, we got together on June’s sun-porch to compare notes. We discovered that that first month had been remarkably similar to many proceeding months of work, save for what had seemed to be merely an extended sort of vacation. Still, we realized then that there was no foreseeable end-point to that vacation - no work place nor routine to which to return.

As we talked, we reminded ourselves that one has no choice about growing older: it is a reality. No one has yet found The Fountain of Youth, nor is anyone likely to do so at any time in the future. On the other hand, if we have no choice but to participate in this mandatory process of aging, it seemed to us that there are at least as many ways to go about it as there are different people growing older. In consequence, our conversation turned to what we were doing and what we wished to do next. June focused on right-sizing her nest and in doing some grieving. Cliff began to use mindfulness skills as he faced growing older and thought about how he wished to do so.

We reminded ourselves that there is a very identifiable end-point to the process of aging, a time when we will have departed this life as we know it. This was not as painful as expected. Rather, that reality led us to generate a list of things we wished not to leave undone. These lists grew over the next several years as we found ourselves identifying common themes, skills, and challenges and we began to wonder more about what we called, processes for creating paths from here to there.

Thinking about Building a Path through Old Age

A couple of years into retirement and writing this project, Cliff began to draw from Rudyard Kipling’s book Kim.¹ With his military experience he found thinking about building a path through old age and the actual creating of the Indian Survey to be quite similar and therefore useful to us. The following is the part on which we focused:

Students of history who are familiar with an earlier ‘Cold War,’ the one between the Tsarist Russian Empire and the British Empire for the possession and control the Indian Sub-continent apply the title of ‘The Great Game’ to several decades of subterfuge, skullduggery, exploration and espionage that ensued as Russia moved steadily southwards coming closer and closer to the environs of the British Raj. Readers of Kipling’s masterpiece, Kim, know that there was an organization called The Indian Survey which prepared very good and accurate maps of India. Information was collected covertly by daring native Indians, supported by very competent British Officers who understood the importance of what is now called topographic intelligence. But the most important work of this relatively secret organization went beyond mere mapping. For this section considered every possible approach into India and every route over which troops would need to be moved to confront a potential threat and prepared what were termed ‘route books.’ There are still samples of these ‘route books’ in existence and their importance lay in their attention to great and seemingly small details.

Kipling’s story and the notion of topographic intelligence and consequent route books got us thinking. For in our minds it seemed relatively simple to draw a map consisting of a line from one point, labeled ‘retirement,’ to another point, labeled ‘the end.’ Such a map would be accurate. Yet, such a map would tell us little about important details that we needed to know such as the characteristics of various things effecting travel through the older years and passage on the easy and challenging path from here to there. In short, what we needed was our own route book. In a very real sense, Living Well as You Age is best treated as a guide to developing a personal route book that can help move us through the challenges of old age to the opportunities found within it.

An Overview of Living Well as You Age as a Route Book on Aging

Three components of living in our older years are considered in our book on living well as we age:

Being

Doing

Becoming

In every area of life these three energies, or factors, are in play as we exist and grow in mind, body and spirit. When experienced together, aging well involves gaining a life rhythm that flows smoothly midst these three processes. Another way of describing this interplay of energies is by adopting the phrases:

We are who and what we are!

What we do reflects our experience of whom and what we are

and whom and what we are becoming!

In the review that follows you will find brief references to some of the many ways we have included thoughts, examples, and exercises to help with the task of being older; choosing how and what to do during this period; and moving in a more focused way on becoming the person you wish to be. Toward these ends you will find:

• Encouragement to embrace the new technologies

One of the interesting changes and resources for getting information is the newer technology available since the early 1980’s - the Internet. It is now easier to look up information on the Net where in the past one had to gather a multitude of hard cover books and journals. The positive side of this is accessibility is it’s relatively low cost. The challenging aspect of all the current technologies is that we are not always certain of the source, nor of the veracity of information gained. Still, there are times when, for our purposes, some information provided in this book is good enough truth, which we believe to be helpful resources to us as we age. In all cases, you will find credit given in the traditional manner whenever possible and other sources credited as available. The fact is we will continue to live with this technology and there is more to come. So we encourage you to be selective and use what works for you.

• A brief look at Models of Aging and the Developmental Integrative Model we use

Several common models of aging are discussed briefly as is our practical and integrative theory of the essential connections between mind, body and spirit as pertains to the selection of the best tasks to be undertaken in our senior years.

• Useful stories, memories and examples

The first and second chapters also delve more deeply into our memories of early retirement issues and pursuant wisdom. These stories are examples that serve to help you reflect on who you are, where you are, and the joys and challenges you are facing.

• Lots of skill building techniques that everyone can learn and do

We have included crucial skill building units on befriending change, increasing mindfulness, managing stress and building resiliency. Current research and ideas for practice regarding stages of change, learning to pay attention to details and experiences, being in the present moment, and managing stress are provided. Improving the use of these skills can increase your sense of wellness and resiliency for the facing of many good and troubling experiences of old age.

• Ideas for addressing obstacles and turning as many as possible into opportunities

Being resistant and unskilled in meeting change; not paying attention to details; experiencing significant stress and other dis-eases of old age are obstacles to living well! Each is rightfully given a complete chapter as are perfectionism and the continued collection and storage of excess physical baggage (things). For, aging well requires establishing a bearable rightsizing of one’s life in all areas of mind, body and spirit. This is attained through practice, use of specific skills and through our efforts of making conscious positive choices. In these chapters we continue to stress the skills of mindfulness, meaning and self-discipline and a stick to it attitude. Because learning involves motivation, knowledge and practice, you will find that this book is a practical guide, with suggestions, examples and self-guided exercises that are easily understood and undertaken.

• Encouragement about mid-course adjustments

When using this book as a resource you will find that your direction and focus changes again and again. That is, after working toward one goal, you may find that you can – and advisably should – begin simultaneously working on another goal. Work on the latter goal will inform some of the work on the earlier goal and help to simplify and clarify that work. Thus the process of living your life, and using this text as guide, will have fluidity and that is likely to be a good thing!

• Support for the changes you make

There are always changes that can improve our circumstances and quality of life. In the process of undertaking some of the exercises suggested in this book you will find that you want to jettison some of your current beliefs, attitudes, and ways of choosing and doing things. You will want to acquire others. This can be both challenge and exciting opportunity for you are not finished with learning, loving and living. And as an important aside: If there is any one key to improving one’s quality of life, it seems to lie in developing the ability to apprehend things for which to be grateful and experiencing the feelings that follow. More will be said about this!

• A call to more growing and becoming

About mid- book you will realize that there is a gentle shift toward greater development of inner life and creativity. After all there is more to life than coping, adapting, and cleaning our closets and garages. In these chapters we focus on transforming old age into the powerful, satisfying experience that it was always meant to be. Once the basic skills and tasks of the first chapters are in hand (not necessarily finished) we are often freed to experience greater emotional and spiritual contentment. We have greater freedom to grow and decide what is truly important during these last ten to forty years.

• The challenge and resources for finishing tasks in our last years

In the last chapters of this book, and as you move on in years, you might be ready to really focus on the issue of goodbyes and hellos; mapping how you want to finish your latter years, and the footprint (legacy) you leave behind. It is our opinion that even a brief peeking into these issues is important for the earlier we get to these tasks the better. Careful considerations of our second half of old age can help us reach our desired destination, or get close enough!

• Ideas about inspiration, trust, and valuing life

The idea of caring about that which helps us celebrate life brings us to the last part of the book. Like the quilt that has been pieced into a beautiful pattern, we lift up in our final chapters more ways to share who we are and how we have been engaged in life. In doing this well, we are able to highlight those many things, experiences, beliefs, and people who have helped us, inspired us along our journey. Along with the experiences we have; the stories we share; and the discovery of that which inspires us; we are charged with the largest task of all, the search for the discovery of old age as a resting place where we truly believe that all will be well. This wellness is achieved by flowing through the circumstances of life with the undercurrent of a trusting mind and spirit.

CHAPTER 1

Our Place in the Aging Process

A s well as being unique individuals with distinctive paths through life, we are also very much interdependent on the