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Community — Envision It!

Contents:

Four Models of Later Life by Gaya Erlandson

Not My Father’s Retirement by J. Alexander Mawhinney

Dreaming Becomes Doing by Marianne Kilkenny

Seeds of Collaborative Community by Gaya Erlandson


From the editor, Gaya Erlandson…

winter is a time of going within, getting clear on our values, priorities, needs, and goals in all areas of our lives. If the desire to live in community has been germinating in you, this is a time when those yearnings rumble from deep within, and you may find yourself wanting to clear out what is outmoded in your life and make way for new seeds of possibility.

The communities we choose to create are shaped — and limited — by whatever model of living we embrace, consciously or, more often, unconsciously. The first article in this section explores the different implicit models that control how we live our lives. After looking at the Consumer Model, the Medical Model, and the Individualistic Model, I propose a Community Model where interdependence — firmly grounded in the realization that the most important resources for living well are other people — is the hallmark.

In the two articles that follow, we move from the theoretical to the practical: Alex Mawhinney, in “Not My Father’s Retirement,” tells why the old models no longer speak to us and suggests some guidelines as we search for new ones; and Marianne Kilkenny, in “Dreaming Becomes Doing,” provides practical suggestions to get you started.

I close with a personal essay that explores how the nuclear family paradigm, one that has been so antithetical to community — has created estrangement between offspring and their parents — including boomers and their aging parents.

What is a healthy community? What principles, values, and perspective underpin it? What aspects must you carefully clarify before you begin the next step of building your ideal community?

I hope we provide enough to get you started!


Four Models of Later Life by Gaya Erlandson

To sharpen our understanding and discussion of community, I offer these four models of living and aging. My descriptions are brief and thus, by necessity, overly simplified. I’m less interested in sharp distinctions and more in a general push for clarity about what our choices are and how those choices support or discourage our moving into more collaborative, interdependent ways of community living.

Consumer Model

In the Consumer Model, people — even though they seldom believe this to be the case — act as if most of one’s needs and personal fulfillment can be purchased. A major shift from living more collaboratively among one’s extended family to living with a focus on consumption began after WWII. Most of us don’t even realize how steeped in this approach to life our society has become.

Our media-driven culture encourages us to buy as much as possible, and it measures the health of our economy according to how much we spend — the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Often consuming our way into debt for things we hardly have room for, we are led to believe that this is somehow patriotic. The government recently attempted to help people in economic trouble by offering “stimulus funds” — to stimulate more purchasing!

Children, who are targeted by much of the advertising, are encouraged from early on to demand various items, from designer clothes to high-tech electronics. Parents work hard to provide the money required and thus too often don’t have the time or energy to spend with the family. Shopping itself is considered by some to be a meaningful way to spend time with loved ones.

Often we don’t know our neighbors and then break what connections we do make with them by moving on average every three years, either to be closer to some job or school or because the new place is deemed somehow better. For the “consumer,” the grass is always greener elsewhere.

Elders into consumption spend their well-earned savings and retirement funds on travel and on living a more luxurious or serene life. Advertisements abound of senior couples walking along some exotic beach, laughing, or playing golf at an expensive retirement community. Seniors are told that they worked hard long enough and now it is time to enjoy life — that is, now it is time to spend their money.

Toward the end of their lives, those expenses begin to include concierge services to bring home groceries and do housework and other tasks. Eventually their “care” is completely provided by paid-for workers in some facility. Increasingly, many of the relationships these elders have on a day-to-day basis are with people who wouldn’t show up if they were not paid to do so. Though this can allow people to “age in place” for a period of time, it is a long way from being part of a caring community.

After the Civil War in America, there was a tremendous movement to live collaboratively within the large cities. In response to the Industrial Revolution, people moved out of their rural, collaborative, extended family homes and into urban centers where both men and women sought work. For the first time in history women worked outside the home and it was difficult to know what to do with the children. New ways to organize living space in support of urban working families were actively pursued for decades.

By the turn of the 19th century, business enterprises to serve working parents were common. Cities had numerous laundries, nurseries, kindergartens, and child care centers. The many public kitchens offered nutritious, economical meals that parents could pick up at the end of the day, along with their children. Hundreds of urban collaborative living experiments were built, including “apartment hotels” of kitchenless units (in favor of staffed, cooperative kitchens) that were specifically designed to accommodate working women and their families.

After 1930, the government and building industry began a campaign to promote the single-family home — preferably a large home away from the city — precisely because it promotes consumerism. Starting with having to buy more cars and gasoline to get there along with individual mowers, appliances, furnaces, etc., such homes indeed promote consumerism! By 1931, President Hoover made the single-family home a national goal in order to promote long-term economic growth and recovery from the Depression.

It took 20 years, but Americans did buy into the individual home as the ideal. In media and advertising of the 1950s, a woman was depicted as being happy and personally fulfilled by servicing her home and family — much like the television shows Father Knows BestOzzie and Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver. A woman that didn’t embrace the joys of homemaking was depicted as selfish and lazy, and her womanhood questioned. It worked.

I mention this because the current interest in collaborative living and collaborative consumption is thought of as new, and the two-generational, nuclear family home as “traditional,” when the exact opposite is true. For the bulk of human history, including our American history, we have lived collaboratively and with a mindset to be economical in our use of resources, including our use of time.

The elusive promise of the Industrial Revolution was that enormous gains in productivity would usher in 30-hour work weeks that allowed families to spend more time together. W. H. Kellogg was one employer noted for this policy for years. The media, however, promoted ever-increasing consumption to match ever-increasing productivity. This required a society-wide belief in scarcity (“gotta have it — even if stored and I never use it!”) and a belief in short-term use or waste (whether it be in storage units or landfills) as acceptable.

Medical Model

Consistent with the western model of medicine, the Medical Model implies that health is the absence of disease. This is most obvious in our health care system. While called “health care,” it clearly has been a disease-care model. Doctors are paid to treat illness, not prevent it. People or issues are not treated or supported until something is obviously wrong.

According to the Medical Model, aging is a process of deterioration that must be minimized and managed. People locked into this view of aging have a particularly difficult time moving into their elder years with grace. In a culture which denies the value of age, it makes sense for older adults to resist being seen as seniors.

The most objectionable assisted care homes are those of the Medical Model. Such facilities typically refer to elders as “patients,” sedate them with daily mind-altering medications, and feed them food of questionable nutritional value — similar to what is offered in many hospitals. Too often patients in these “care” homes spend their time sitting in wheelchairs, lying in bed alone in their rooms, or watching TV for hours each day — killing time until they deteriorate enough to die.

There is a modicum of good news, however. The attempt to address the dire condition in such facilities has spawned tremendous innovations in housing, and western medicine itself has generated countless improvements in treating diseases and ailments that commonly killed or handicapped people before. But It has been western medicine, not the medical or, more aptly, the disease model, from which the benefits have flowed.

Individualistic Model

Individualism has become a central tenet of the American Dream. Through most of modern history, when people wanted to improve social conditions, they focused on creating the ideal community or town. The American Dream was the ideal city. After World War II, the focus changed from the ideal town to the ideal home. Living “the good life” meant acquiring lots of toys, tools, and appliances which you stored in your single-family home whose occupants represented one or two generations.

Without the safety net of a larger extended family involvement, women in particular are challenged, as most work outside the home — and today most resume work, at least part time, when their infants are less than one year old. Often sleep deprived and exhausted, many mothers resort to antianxiety and antidepressant drugs as well as sleep medication. Such prescribed use of drugs has been considered epidemic since the late 1950s and has been grossly underreported, as have been the long-term effects of such drug use (Whitaker, 2010).

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of individualism is the myth that single-family households are — and should be — independent of the support and resources of others. Thus, even if extended family or willing neighbors are available to support a family’s child-rearing efforts, for example, having them do so on a regular, daily basis is almost unthinkable. Young and older people worry about burdening or being burdened by others. What is acceptable is paying for such services, which then contributes to the sense of exhaustion many parents experience.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation. — Margaret Mead

For seniors, the end state of this ruggedly individualistic approach to living is the aging individual or couple who lives alone in an oversized home in deep isolation from others. Even if there are neighbors living nearby, they still feel they must be independent and do for themselves. After all, this is how they lived while they were raising their families. And so they struggle increasingly with their own care and the difficult upkeep of their property.

The alternative to this “independence trap” is the recognition that we can, do, and should depend on others within the community and welcome the proximity and engagement of extended family. This is how we behaved just decades ago; fortunately, we now are rediscovering its benefits and values. Sharing our lives beyond the box of our one- or two-generational homes and effectively negotiating our values, desires, and the gifts we have to offer are necessary to live locally in effective collaborative communities.

In the interest of balance, we should note that we have also reaped tremendous benefits from Individualism. Taking a very broad historical perspective, one can trace a progression from tyranny to democracy which clearly correlates with the increasing value of the individual. Indeed, the increased rights and responsibilities of the individual are a hallmark of more civilized societies. Even the increasing isolation of individuals since WWII has its benefits: Had people been more tied to the traditions of their families and clans, it is possible that many of the innovations we now use every day would never have been invented. Thus, while the celebration of the individual has perhaps gone to an extreme (Slater, 1990), the ingenuity and irrepressible pioneering spirit of the individual is a highly valued part of our American identity.

Community Model

Interdependence — firmly grounded in the realization that the most important resources for living well are other people — is the hallmark of the Community Model. By valuing, believing in, and trusting in the gifts, wisdom, and support of our neighbors and nearby family members, interdependence — and thus true community — is possible. People of all ages in such communities share skills, responsibilities, and resources.

We all have heard of different kinds of land-based communities: bedroom, gated, new urban, golf communities, retirement communities, ecovillages, and cohousing “intentional communities,” to name a few. What I am emphasizing is the related concepts of collaboration and interdependence. The belief here is that whatever you call the community, the more it embraces effective collaboration and balanced interdependence, the more rewarding and life enhancing it becomes for all. And these benefits derive from caring relationships.

Recent research has shown that people are neurologically “wired” to connect and to contribute. This means that when we live in communities that support the giving of our gifts, we are healthier, happier, and we live longer (Post, 2011). Studies attempting to isolate the common denominator of people who live the longest have identified their sense of caring connection and community. This has a far more dramatic impact than such things as diet and exercise (Buettner, 2010).

Though less common than in years past, communities with a high amount of interdependence still exist in many smaller towns across America. People in such towns know one another and “take care of their own.” Too often, however, the young people are moving away, especially as factories close and employment opportunities dry up. The promise on the horizon, however, is a plethora of excellent researchers and activists who are cocreating a modern version of caring communities to meet our needs as individuals and families.

I’ll mention one example here, namely, the work of John McKnight and Peter Block. McKnight and Block describe what they call a “competent” community — one in which the people know each other, care for one another, and cocreate fulfilling lives. Such competence is essential for families to function at their best.

The reason why many young people have so many “problems” that need servicing is that they are raised without a culture of community where they are a part of something…. teenagers are not needed. In the absence of purpose, they search for the belonging found in a social networking. For youth, the peer group is a substitute for the community of family and neighborhood. (p. 67)

The competent community also recognizes how much elders have to contribute to the mutual good. The young can apprentice with older adults in any area of mutual interest — auto repair, furniture making, carpentry, baking, herbal medicine, physics, storytelling, or music making. Also, kids can mentor other kids. A new kind of community-based education can occur within a rich fabric of relationship (see my article on “Envisioning Intentional Community” in this section).

When effective collaboration and balanced interdependence are high, a sense of belonging, personal worth, and interpersonal competence is generated from early on. Lifelong learning and meaningful engagement become natural activities for everyone. When all are encouraged to seek others out as valued resources for wisdom, inspiration, and personal fulfillment, elders naturally are revered.

In other words, the optimum community is one where everyone is involved in the raising of the children, in interdependent caring relationships, and in contributing to the vitality of the whole. While elders may well be housed in clusters of living units unto themselves, they are best integrated into the larger neighborhood to help it be a competent, collaborative community for the benefit of all.

Conclusion

The first three models all have their place in history and in our lives. Miracles are performed every day from the Disease Model, and both the Consumption and Individualistic models have promoted the acceptance of cultural change at unprecedented rates. It’s all about balance and values, however.

In taking a paradigm of oneness view, we can celebrate the value of the individual beyond individualism, and we can create structures that allow for effective collaboration and sustainable living. I believe that it’s only within the context of competent, collaborative communities that we as citizens of all ages and capacities can live long, happy lives and develop to our rich human potential.

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References

Buettner, Dan. 2010. The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

McKnight, John and Peter Block. 2012. Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Post, Stephen G. 2011. The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Slater, Philip. 1990. The Pursuit of Loneliness, 20th Anniversary Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.

Whitaker, Robert. 2011. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. Louisville, KY: Broadway.

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Gaya Erlandson is a psychologist, writer, teacher, social architect, and community consultant. Certified in Imago Relationship Therapy, she loves to coach couples, facilitate groups, and offer trainings related to conscious relationships and living the new paradigm. Gaya lives in Lotus Lodge — a shared home near Asheville, NC, which is situated on 2.5 acres of land with a pond, stream, and organic gardens. Lotus Lodge and its community was the subject of a recent news segment on CBS Early Morning — an experience which in part has inspired the project she is now working on, a how-to book on creating and maintaining shared households.


Not My Father’s Retirement by J. Alexander Mawhinney

Back in the 1970s, U.S. automaker Oldsmobile coined a commercial slogan: “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile.” The goal was to convince the public that the product was a radical change from the previous generation of cars. Instead of rehashing the same tired old institutional models of retirement living, why not launch a radical new model more in sync with a new generation of elders?

We are all familiar with the “older generation” of elder living options that were available to our parents:

Age in place — in a home not designed for aging in place, eventually aging alone.

Move in with children or other relatives
Move to an institution — and pay highly for care delivered by strangers, under their rules and schedules. The institution might be a nursing home, an assisted living facility, a rest home, a retirement hotel, or a continuing care retirement community with multiple levels of care.

The children who were being wooed to buy that radically changed Oldsmobile in the ‘70s are now older than their fathers were then. And they expect an entirely new model of retirement living from what their fathers accepted. WE are among them!

These “children” are members of the (in)famous post–WWII baby boom generation, and they have been radicals all their lives. They don’t intend to get old, they don’t intend to leave their homes, and they certainly don’t want to live under other people’s rules and schedules!

Boomers are less regimented than their parents, more independent, more social, and more extravagant. Moving to an institution is not a consideration for most. As boomers age, we will see nursing homes, assisted living, and even continuing care retirement communities become passé and struggle to reinvent themselves.

Baby Boomers Paving the Way to New Options

Now is the time to consider a new lifestyle for the aging baby boomers — a new paradigm that is a polar opposite from the institution-based nursing home or assisted living facility in which many of our fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles spent their last years. While many imaginative options are being developed, the new model I particularly advocate is the intentional community.

First, a definition: An intentional community is “a group of unrelated people who come together to share the deliberate pursuit of some noble aim.” That noble aim usually includes some form of shared values along with a disposition to be proactive and creative instead of waiting for the aging process to preclude their making a choice.

Though intentional communities typically are multigenerational, there is a new genre of elder community — an intentional elder-friendly neighborhood — that merits a careful look. While not usually designated as age-restricted, its design and amenities appeal to mature people (40s up) who are seeking the opportunity to choose neighbors — almost in the way one might select a new family — with whom they intend to share the second half of life.

When considering the creation of a new elder-friendly community, the structural principles for a successful community become essential:

Principles of an Intentional Elder Neighborhood

  • Relationship-based community — We humans are social animals. We find personal meaning from the personal recognition from others. We are seeking not just interaction, but mutual respect, admiration, belonging, a feeling of usefulness, and even love. In a platonic relationship, we find the potential for those desires and basic human needs to be met. We can be more together than we can be when we are alone.
  • Human Scale — Ten seems to be the natural limit on how many people an individual can know on a close “first person” basis and up to another 25 or so on a second person basis.The community is planned so we can develop personal relationships with everyone who lives in our neighborhood. We know their stories, and they know ours on a personal and intimate level. The neighborhood, therefore, is limited to 30-40 households. There may be multiple neighborhoods in the community.
  • Resident Centered — Residents determine and manage their own schedules and the activities in which they are involved. If a resident needs assistance with daily activities, that help can be managed without becoming the focus of the daily routine.
  • Embracing Lifelong Learning — Residents recognize and embrace the joy of learning and sharing knowledge throughout their lives. There is usually an affiliation with a nearby college or university to enable residents to take and/or teach classes and help others’ lifelong learning though mentoring and volunteering. Intellectual stimulation is essential to continuing mental, physical, and spiritual health.
  • Spirituality in Later Life — Residents recognize that spiritual growth is a primary work of those in the later stages of life. Residents encourage one another to seek meaning in life and Spirit in daily experiences. Acceptance of spiritual diversity is fundamental.
  • Environmental Consciousness — Though environmental commitments have a strong social grounding, economic considerations also come into play as residents seek to extend their incomes in a time when heating, cooling, water, and other infrastructure costs are rising.Consequently, homes are designed and sited to take advantage of solar or geo-thermal opportunities. Gray-water recycling systems can be incorporated for watering the community garden and other secondary needs. Homes are constructed from sustainable, “healthy-built/non-toxic” materials and frequently have common walls and shared heating/cooling systems. Appliances are carefully selected to minimize electric consumption.
  • Part of Greater Community — In lieu of being segregated as an elder-only community, the intentional elder neighborhood is integrated into a greater community. Residents are encouraged to share the wisdom and experience they have accumulated over a lifetime. Elders are in a unique position in life to offer perspective to youth and younger adults, many of whom struggle to meet the demands of modern life.Indeed, elders can mentor younger people, volunteer in various settings, teach or lecture as desired, and provide inspiration to young and old alike. In a time when living locally is called for on every level (economic, environmental, social), elders can provide the essential element to weave the social fabric of a community together.

This movement for improved housing for elders has the potential for creating community in neighborhoods where none existed, an outcome that can radically improve everyone’s lives for generations to come. And it may be boomers that lead the way.

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J. Alexander Mawhinney NHA, FACHCE, MS (in Healthcare Administration), has spent most of the past 35 years developing and managing conventional “retirement communities” including independent, assisted living, dementia care, skilled nursing, and continuing care retirement communities.

A few years ago, he realized that a retirement community, no matter how beautiful or well managed, is still an institution and so began working with Dr. Bill Thomas and others in the “new paradigm elder community” movement. Currently he is a consultant nationwide to developers interested in building elder neighborhoods in human scale — including cluster cottages, atrium houses, and the Green House (replacement for nursing and assisted living facilities). He is also working to introduce the Life Care at Home concept in states in which it can be developed.


Dreaming Becomes Doing by Marianne Kilkenny

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

— Margaret Mead

I come home from my long trip to the West Coast exhausted from the time change and the joys of current air travel. As I turn into my driveway, I see my lights are on in my house and the shades are drawn. What a welcome sight for a woman living alone. Someone is expecting me and welcoming me home.

It is my neighbor, Ginny, who has been taking care of the house and my two cats while I visited other states in my travels talking about the glories of living in community. Since 2006, I have encouraged, cajoled, and nudged those in my cohort to investigate new ways of spending our lives as we move forward into our second half of life.

Home Alone

My quest to live in community kicked into gear when my parents died about five years ago. Because I had no children, I’d spent many years talking to my friends about emulating the Golden Girls (though maybe with separate dwellings!). It was suddenly time to do something about it. No time to waste.

Since then, I have sponsored conferences, one-day events, and spoken about women wanting to live in community in our second half of life. Why women? My answer: because I am one, and I understand us better. And to state the obvious, we live longer, we have freedoms now that no women before us had — and the list goes on. To add to that, I believe in what Scott Peck said back in 1987 in The Different Drum:  Community Making and Peace: “In and through community lies the salvation of the world.”

Urgency. Yes, there is some of that because I don’t have all the time in the world now. Not like when I was 20. And maybe that is a good thing as we endeavor to bring community to a large group of aging Americans. No time to waste.

Why, What, Who?

So… what are the steps to envisioning your community? The biggest one is WHY? Why is this something you want to do or might consider doing?

Is it the connection with others? Lights on when you get home? Mutual support? Shared gardens, cooperative meals, economic advantages and resources, business opportunities, sustainability (learning, teaching and practicing it), community support, and social networks?

Is it being with like-minded others, ease of education, health and fitness, creative expression, recreational opportunities, personal and spiritual growth, fun and laughter, shared resources, and overall ease of living? The list is endless. For me, it’s connection with others.

Then there is the WHAT: What will it look like, where will it be? Large or small, a shared single-family home, multiunit structures, apartments/condos? Urban, suburban, walk to town, countryside, mountainside, forest? Ecovillage, ecocity, cohousing, or a mixture of the best of these?

Also, important is the WHO — the others in your community. Who are the people you want to be living with? All artists, elders, mixed generations, couples, families, all women, multigenerational, like-minded or those who share your stated values and your location? How to find these people?

Getting Creative

I am often asked which is more important, the place or the people? Both are important.

As a spiritual person who believes we attract like people and locations to us, I know that having a written vision and/or a drawing or bullet points of what I want laid out helps. I can show it to someone, explain my thoughts, and relay my deep convictions. I also can enroll others in my vision, but only if I have one.

I often get calls, especially from women, whether married or single, who are looking for “the place to age in community.” We need to cocreate them, adapting current models as needed: cohousing, shared housing, and new urbanist villages, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) all are part of the solution. Possibly a hybrid, taking the best of these, will emerge.

One woman wrote her WHY: “I am 55 and would love to find like-minded and like-hearted souls who want to come together for greater ease of living, companionship, looking out for one another, and a sense of continuous growth mentally and spiritually.

As of right now, I challenge you to talk, listen to others, go within, draw pictures, visit communities: clarifying your vision of your community in whatever way works for you. Maybe it’s staying where you are and making it a neighborhood community, using your identified WHY as your model. That is possible. That is what I did for four years.

Marianne Kilkenny is a speaker, coach, and educator who works with groups and individuals looking for alternative models for living in communities in later life. Formerly a Human Resource executive in California, she currently lives in Asheville, NC, where she co-founded the Asheville Communities Network in 2006 and the Women FOR Living in Community Network in 2009. This later organization has offered events in both Asheville, NC, and Sarasota, FL, and is looking to spread the word through speaking, workshops, and online webinars and videos. The collaborative household in which Marianne has lived since January 2011 (after this article was written) was featured last year on NBC Nightly News.


Seeds of Collaborative Community by Gaya Erlandson

I was born to educated parents who valued equality, social justice for all  including women  and who espoused the importance of being authentic and living one’s dream. In sharp contrast to this, however, my mother was clinically depressed — enough to spend time in psychiatric hospitals.

Intelligent, talented, and beautiful, she dreamed of having a family and a professional life, to do her art and have various social, intellectual, and creative pursuits. Somehow I knew that her depression was because she felt trapped at home with her five kids. Then one day when I was nine, I had an intriguing thought.

I wondered whether other mothers also were depressed. I decided to find out. So I went to my friends’ homes, this time to take a serious look at their mothers. We lived in a middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN, with houses up and down both sides of the street. What I saw in those big homes were women who looked dull, duty bound, and depressed. I was stunned! I remember standing on the front lawn afterward and saying to myself, “If everyone would just learn to collaborate, it would be so much easier and fun. Life is meant to be easy and fun!” Thus were sewn the seeds of my lifelong interest in living in community — in a particular way.

Let’s Collaborate for Fun and Ease!

For me, the whole point of living in community is to make life easier, more free and fun for everyone — all ages and perspectives. Within such an environment, I envisioned high quality of life and the opportunity for everyone to reach their potential. Consequently, the intentional communities that I became aware of starting in the 1970s didn’t interest me.

Many “ecovillages” have taken a “back to basics” approach that have women baking bread, gardening, and canning food, and the men chopping wood, etc. I wasn’t interested in more work or going back to gender stratification. My mother taught me well.

Also, I couldn’t buy into the idea that these “earth-friendly” rural communities were really promoting sustainability in the long run. After all, how sustainable is a project that has only 50 people living on 200 acres? Especially when they require proximity to the services of an urban center and a road and commute to get there.

Hoping to find or found a happy, flowing community some day, I pursued a career as a psychologist. I also researched, wrote, and created workshops relevant to community, compiling information and processes that could help people communicate and collaborate well together.

A New Perspective

I realized that the post-WWII parents, my parents, were the FIRST generation to raise a family without the experience or assistance of extended family. Without reliable birth control, they still had families of 3, 4, 5 or more children who, for the first time in history, weren’t expected to contribute to the homestead.

Help from the extended family members was replaced by appliances, “mother’s helpers,” that only the woman was expected to operate. Childrearing practices included considerable permissiveness compared with before, and fathers now worked miles away from home, often in unfulfilling careers, in an attempt to pay for it all.

I also learned by 1960 that there was an epidemic of depressed women who were taking prescribed antidepressants, just like my mother. Unbeknownst to each other and in sharp contrast to the media portrayal of utopian nuclear family life, women en masse felt trapped and depressed in their isolated homes.

What catalyzed the women’s movement in the late 1960s was women sharing the truth of their personal distress instead of pretending all was well. Women all over the country sat in consciousness-raising groups, sharing their sense of disappointment and disempowerment. Initial fear and hopelessness turned to relief, anger for some, and a new determinism.

Many of the women who contributed to the women’s movement were those baby boomers who attempted to live the lifestyle of their mothers. Having been raised to focus more on their own fulfillment, however, they were much more able to refuse the limitation and difficulty of that lifestyle.

They also saw that this was a cultural and political issue, rather than a personal one. I remember hearing the slogan, “The personal is political,” and totally understanding what that meant. I never agreed, however, that the “liberation” movement should be named after women. Instead, I saw a broader context having to do with moving outside the rules and roles of society for both genders. For me, what was happening was a “human liberation” movement, and the possibilities were exciting.

Domestic Revolution

Interestingly, however, the women’s movement didn’t challenge the notion of the nuclear family as the primary caregiving unit. Perhaps because of this, it also didn’t address the aging issues of their parents — whose hearts and hands had always been part of the traditional extended family.

Rather than being replaced by innovative, urban, collaborative living structures that would have welcomed the older generations, the nuclear family household went largely unchallenged. As a result, millions of households became hotbeds for hostility and estrangement between the genders and between the generations.

The Generation Gaps

Conflict, confusion, and estrangement between parents and their children are inevitable and utterly predictable when looked at in terms of time management and economics.

Even a surface analysis shows what you will get when you add over-extended parents with children, who are acculturated to disdain any substantive household contribution while also demanding goods (i.e., are largely ungrateful) and services (i.e., taxi!) from early on.

A friend recently told me that the number of presents his grandchildren received from his son and wife was “obscene.” “They tore into one after the other, with no real appreciation.” I would bet that these young parents were attempting to compensate for their guilt and rage they have felt and can’t acknowledge.

Collaboration Breeds Harmony; Injustice, Contempt

Parents within nuclear family households work hard to pay the bills and to suppress personal pain, disillusionment, and denial. Isolation breeds susceptibility to media-fed illusions that all the other Joneses are doing just fine, but we are falling behind.

The result is longer working hours for both men and women to pay for it all, with little time for personal fulfillment and very little time for family involvement — with either the children or their grandparents.

Women now have achieved rates of stress-related illness similar to men. No wonder so many of their/our aging parents have ended up in some institutionalized setting. Adherence to the nuclear family structure precludes substantive, contributory involvement from either the youth or their grandparents.

And speaking of youth, in some cities, many of the offspring of working parents (single- and dual-income parents) can’t avoid violence. In middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs of ideal dream homes, a surprising number of children have shown pathological behavior, such as gratuitous violence and even cold-blooded murder.

The Way We Never Were

Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and national co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, gives more thought-provoking data. According to Coontz, the 1995 census, for the first time ever, indicated a majority of moms in the U.S. went back to work at least part time before their kids reached age one.

In her book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Coontz suggests the images we hold today of the “traditional family” are derived from 1950s television serials.

Coontz researched the composition and functioning of American families that existed from 1600 on and concludes that no “golden age” of family can be found, and that many of our ideals are based on a mythical family that never existed in the real world.

Whereas some claim our social ills are due to a breakdown of the “traditional” family —referring to the nuclear family — Coontz asserts that many of America’s problems, both in and outside of the family, result from the clash between unrealistic expectations of this illusory family and a changing socioeconomic world.

According to Coontz, many of the most visible symptoms of a “family crisis” are not caused by those who have rejected presumed “traditional” family values, but by those who cling to those values. She concludes that solving the complex issues of modern times requires social commitments and obligations that extend beyond the nuclear family.

Boomers and Elders, Unite!

While the issues are complex, I believe the estrangement between boomers and their aging parents can be attributed in large part to the continued unquestioned adherence to the nuclear family paradigm. Both households hold unto themselves and don’t want to be a burden to, or burdened by, the other.

What’s very hopeful is that boomers are demanding and are looking to revolutionize how people live through the elder years. Rather than simply renovating retirement settings, what really interests me is a whole paradigm shift in how the masses structure their lives, so that people of all ages live together and transform our future.

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Gaya Erlandson is a psychologist, writer, teacher, social architect, and community consultant. Certified in Imago Relationship Therapy, she loves to coach couples, facilitate groups, and offer trainings related to conscious relationships and living the new paradigm. Gaya lives in Lotus Lodge — a shared home near Asheville, NC, which is situated on 2.5 acres of land with a pond, stream, and organic gardens. Lotus Lodge and its community was the subject of a recent news segment on CBS Early Morning — an experience which in part has inspired the project she is now working on, a how-to book on creating and maintaining shared households.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

— Margaret Mead

I come home from my long trip to the West Coast exhausted from the time change and the joys of current air travel. As I turn into my driveway, I see my lights are on in my house and the shades are drawn. What a welcome sight for a woman living alone. Someone is expecting me and welcoming me home.

It is my neighbor, Ginny, who has been taking care of the house and my two cats while I visited other states in my travels talking about the glories of living in community. Since 2006, I have encouraged, cajoled, and nudged those in my cohort to investigate new ways of spending our lives as we move forward into our second half of life.

Home Alone

My quest to live in community kicked into gear when my parents died about five years ago. Because I had no children, I’d spent many years talking to my friends about emulating the Golden Girls (though maybe with separate dwellings!). It was suddenly time to do something about it. No time to waste.

Since then, I have sponsored conferences, one-day events, and spoken about women wanting to live in community in our second half of life. Why women? My answer: because I am one, and I understand us better. And to state the obvious, we live longer, we have freedoms now that no women before us had — and the list goes on. To add to that, I believe in what Scott Peck said back in 1987 in The Different Drum:  Community Making and Peace: “In and through community lies the salvation of the world.”

Urgency. Yes, there is some of that because I don’t have all the time in the world now. Not like when I was 20. And maybe that is a good thing as we endeavor to bring community to a large group of aging Americans. No time to waste.

Why, What, Who?

So… what are the steps to envisioning your community? The biggest one is WHY? Why is this something you want to do or might consider doing?

Is it the connection with others? Lights on when you get home? Mutual support? Shared gardens, cooperative meals, economic advantages and resources, business opportunities, sustainability (learning, teaching and practicing it), community support, and social networks?

Is it being with like-minded others, ease of education, health and fitness, creative expression, recreational opportunities, personal and spiritual growth, fun and laughter, shared resources, and overall ease of living? The list is endless. For me, it’s connection with others.

Then there is the WHAT: What will it look like, where will it be? Large or small, a shared single-family home, multiunit structures, apartments/condos? Urban, suburban, walk to town, countryside, mountainside, forest? Ecovillage, ecocity, cohousing, or a mixture of the best of these?

Also, important is the WHO — the others in your community. Who are the people you want to be living with? All artists, elders, mixed generations, couples, families, all women, multigenerational, like-minded or those who share your stated values and your location? How to find these people?

Getting Creative

I am often asked which is more important, the place or the people? Both are important.

As a spiritual person who believes we attract like people and locations to us, I know that having a written vision and/or a drawing or bullet points of what I want laid out helps. I can show it to someone, explain my thoughts, and relay my deep convictions. I also can enroll others in my vision, but only if I have one.

I often get calls, especially from women, whether married or single, who are looking for “the place to age in community.” We need to cocreate them, adapting current models as needed: cohousing, shared housing, and new urbanist villages, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) all are part of the solution. Possibly a hybrid, taking the best of these, will emerge.

One woman wrote her WHY: “I am 55 and would love to find like-minded and like-hearted souls who want to come together for greater ease of living, companionship, looking out for one another, and a sense of continuous growth mentally and spiritually.

As of right now, I challenge you to talk, listen to others, go within, draw pictures, visit communities: clarifying your vision of your community in whatever way works for you. Maybe it’s staying where you are and making it a neighborhood community, using your identified WHY as your model. That is possible. That is what I did for four years.