Adult advocate and author Missy Buchanan recently visited CC Young Senior Living and offered a paradigm shift for aging adults. In her presentation, she gave attendees a few tools to help with this change in perspective along with ways to plan for the known and unknown challenges they may face along the journey.

“Sometimes our plan for late life turns out differently than we expected or wanted,” said Missy Buchanan. “But if we plan for it, it can be exciting and memorable.”

She noted a few of the bumps that come along the aging journey and offered a few tips.

Work together to create a plan

She noted that the desire to be independent does not diminish with age, and if anything, it can become more important. She encouraged attendees not to assume they know what a loved one is thinking about their future but instead ask to try and make the best decisions together. She cited that often, adult children want safety, a nice environment and help with daily activities for their aging parents. However, the aging adult parent typically wants to be respected, to remain as independent as possible, to be needed with a purpose and to have deep relationships and friendships as they age.

Show respect to each other

She cautioned attendees not to consider the adult child and aging parent a role reversal. The adult child will take on different responsibilities, but they are not becoming their parent’s parent. Before an aging parent will welcome an adult child’s input, they need to know the adult child is trying to understand their losses, frustrations, challenges and joys.

Recognize the impact of loss and grief

She showed a series of family photos that illustrated the change of a family dynamic over the years with age, death and illness impacting the number of family members in a photo. She talked about the different losses we experience as we age including death, loss of familiarity, loss of our belongings, loss of our senses and even a loss of our identity.

“Honor your grief and make space for it,” she said. “Feel all the emotions and don’t try to conceal them.”

She noted that no generation has experienced as much change as the Baby Boomer generation.

Encourage one another

Her final point was to find humor even in the hardships and not to get stuck. She reinforced the need for community and the act of moving forward. She challenged the crowd to discover what makes life meaningful as we age beyond just your family connections, although those are important too of course.

“Like a sunset, our late years can be awe inspiring!” she encouraged.

She also shared more insights with the CC Young team in this blog article.