Where will we live when we get older?

Open Minds Online Group - Sept 23

This month we were thinking about our future older selves. What would they look like, where would they be living and who would they have around them? Where would our lives be positioned in relation to our biological and chosen families?

One of the ideas that kept repeating in this group was the idea of community building. We were interested in talking about places where we could live as older people where our LGBTQIA+ selves were not an issue. We also wanted to live somewhere free of racial prejudice.

We realised that these places are still in short supply and they will need motivated and well-resourced individuals from these communities to take part in designing them. They’ll also need wider society to become more inclusive of sexual and gender diversity.

Most of us had some worries about becoming isolated and lonely as we age. Knowing about the possibility of intergenerational living for those who have children and grandchildren, we wondered about what this kind of living could look like for us LGBTQIA+ people.

Our physical health was another worry and for some of the younger members of the group, they found it hard to imagine a time when their body started to show signs of wear and tear. We talked about the importance of looking after your body as much as you can as this is an investment for our older life.

Becoming physically or mentally frail might mean that we become dependent on others for help and support and again, this was a difficult thing for us to imagine happening to us. We hoped that if it happened we would be cared for with respect.

We ended the group with a call to action and some of the members talked about wanting to get involved in setting up homes for intergenerational living where the focus is on community building, skill sharing, and living well in a shared space. We want to be valued and useful in our older age.

We hope that by discussing the process of aging and imagining our older selves living content lives, we can help this become a reality. No one can predict how their body will age or how their circumstances will change, but hopefully by investing in our health, communities, and wellbeing when we’re younger - we might be able to make these positive imaginations a reality.

With warm wishes,

The Open Minds Project ­

We usually meet on the last Wednesday of each month and if you want to join us at an Open Minds Meeting, please visit the Events page on our website.