Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing As We Age

Chapter 5 focuses on caregiving among older women as people around them become ill or die. It begins with an anecdote about Crystal, whose husband had a stroke. She became his caregiver and felt they had lost the lives they had before the stroke, but she adapted and avoided comparing their current lives to their old ones.

Pipher notes that caregiving is both challenging and satisfying for women. It is a traditional role for women that can also be meaningful yet stressful, as studies show, and Pipher notes the need to appreciate the work of caregivers. She describes Ardith, who provided care for her mother because she resisted moving to a care facility. Her mother was difficult and overbearing, and Ardith sacrificed her own needs for her, which impacted her mental health and marriage. Pipher argues that like other caregivers, Ardith should appreciate herself. All caregivers need balanced lives and self-care, and they must learn to create limits.

Related research by Emily Esfahani Smith compares meaning, such as that felt by caregivers, with happiness. Smith contends that happiness involves “taking” and meaning involves “self-sacrifice.” She claims that those who desire happiness become unhappy if their desires are unmet, yet those who desire meaning have the ability to get past problems.

Willow provides care for her husband Saul, who has Parkinson’s disease. She worried that his disease would impact her career and their future. He offered to hire a caregiver when his disease progressed, but then she felt guilty at the thought. This demonstrates the complex feelings that occur with caregiving, Pipher says, which require growth and learning new skills.

Chapter 6 centers on older women’s complex experiences with death and dying and begins with an anecdote about Jenny, who was a caregiver for her parents. Her mother told her that she was ready to die the weekend before her death, and her father died a month later. Jenny explains that this experience was both challenging and poignant.

People avoid discussing death, Pipher says, but they need to discuss it with family, including talking about final preparations and wills. She describes how the American medical system teaches people to ignore death and pushes treatments at the end of life that doctors would not use themselves. Besides practical preparations, women should understand the emotions that occur with dying. Rosalee, a hospice worker, illuminates death and dying experiences to help older women understand them better. She notes that people experience more fear and emotional distress than physical pain when dying. She details five end-of-life conversations people have: “Please forgive me. I forgive you. I love you. Thank you. Goodbye” (74). These conversations show how people’s emotional needs are simple at the end of life. Rosalee identifies the differences in women’s hospice experiences, arguing that they are better at emotional conversations and use more alternative therapies. She also notes that people want to die without their family around because it is “easier to let go when alone by simply drifting away” (74).

Several anecdotes offer examples of understanding and growing from loss: Mavis helped her husband die at home and settle issues with family and friends; Pat’s husband died at 57 and she learned what was important in life, while still grappling with grief two years later; and Pipher’s aunt Grace told her to appreciate the people still in her life. Grief is important, yet complex, Pipher argues, and the death of loved ones makes women stronger and braver. She explains how the experience of grief is a “reflection of our capacity to love. It allows us to understand the most profound human experience at the most intimate level” (77-78). An additional stage of grief, according to psychologist John Bowlby, is “yearning and searching,” or a desire to be with the person who died (77), a feeling experienced by some of Pipher’s interviewees. Pipher concludes that growth is part of dealing with grief, which creates more meaning and gratitude for women.

Chapter 7 addresses the loneliness felt by older women and how it can be reframed as solitude. The chapter starts with an anecdote about Carla that describes how loneliness in old age occurs because people are less social: Carla was lonely because her husband was an introvert, her kids moved, and she had no one to talk to.

According to data scientist Henrik Lindberg, people between the ages of 20 and 40 spend less than four hours a day alone, but after the age of 70, that number jumps to seven hours a day. Several anecdotes describe various reasons older women feel lonely: Holly’s daughter moved away; Joyce’s close friend moved away; Sandra had a fight with her daughter, who started avoiding her; and Mona focused on work and didn’t have time to make friends. Kestrel, on the other hand, did not have a romantic partner or see her family often but did not view herself as lonely. Estelle also enjoys her solitude, and Pipher’s friend Jean copes with loneliness through travel. These stories reveal how women can view their alone time as solitude instead. Older women can also use their memories or books as companions, adopt a pet, or find ways to connect with other people, such as at work, as Marta did. Pipher notes the usefulness of finding activities to do alone to change a mindset of loneliness into one of solitude.