The Big Move: Life Between the Turning Points [Paperback]

When her husband's ill health forces them to move into an assisted living facility, Anne M. Wyatt-Brown suddenly finds herself surrounded by elderly residents. In this lively and provocative collection, other distinguished gerontologists reflect on Anne's moving account of her transition to becoming a member of a vibrant and sociable community that offers care-giving support, while encouraging her to pursue her own interests, including exercising, reviewing articles for scholarly journals, serving on committees, and singing. By redefining notions of care and community, undoing the stigmas of aging, and valuing the psychological factors involved in accepting assistance, this volume provides a bold new framework for thinking about aging, continuing care, making the big move to a retirement community, and living with vitality in the new environment.

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Anne M. Wyatt-Brown is Emeritus Associate Professor in the Program in Linguistics, University of Florida.

Ruth Ray Karpen is Professor Emeritus in the College of Liberal Arts at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Helen Q. Kivnick, Ph.D., L.P. is Professor of Social Work at the University of Minnesota.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette is an internationally known age critic, nonfiction writer, and essayist.

We Americans prize independence, but for many elderly people, the price they pay for independence is loneliness and worthlessness.?The Big Move?is a fascinating attempt to marry personal experience with academic analysis to help us all reconceive of one option for later-life living. Moving to a continuing care retirement community need not be viewed as a withdrawal from life, but rather as a new platform to manage one's infirmities at the same time as one uses one's skills.

This is a remarkable book about finding the right place to age. It uses a single true story, refracted throughlď