Category: Ageing without children

Gracefully by Sister Kate Holmstrom

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Image from Freepik

Gracefully is written by Sister Kate Holmstrom, a Holy Child Sister, resident at a care home in Harrogate, who has just turned 85 years old.

Sister Kate has contributed a number of pieces to Growing Old Grace-fully.

Sister Kate introduces Gracefully as follows:

“Many sights, gestures or even sounds may be perceived as graceful. They resonate, perhaps, with an inner grace inhabiting a person – an open, positive attitude attuned to what is good, true, righteous, beautiful. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they are ready to welcome countless riches and enjoy life!”

Gracefully

Growing old gracefully. With grace. Ageing: a grace.
Graceful rhymes with grateful,
And gracefully sounds like: graciously.
Little girls dancing, gymnasts leaping and bounding,
Flying, seemingly without effort, defying gravity.
Why do graceful movements, or the clear song of a blackbird
Strike an almost physical chord of beauty within us?
A smile is a grace, irradiating a tired face
And gracing the recipient.

How is it that an ageing body can seem clumsy, ungainly
Even painful, to the one who inhabits it?
Yet the soul within can be stirring, growing, soaring forward
Borne up by the Spirit, the very breath of her Creator.
Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us as we are now,
In this moment, (this Moment)
That the hour of our death may be grace-filled,
That final, gracious grace.

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!

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Leeds Homeshare is a scheme that aims to prove the opening words of Psalm 133 to be true.

 

The scheme carefully matches an older person, who might need some help to live independently in their own home, with someone who has a housing need.  In  return for providing low cost accommodation, the older person gets a minimum of 10 hours of help with daily living tasks like cleaning, shopping, gardening or  walking the dog.

But it’s really about companionship, about living with someone in unity and, as the Psalm says, it can be so ‘good and pleasant’.  It can help older people stay independent and in their own home for longer and offers companionship and new relationships for both the homeowner and the homesharer.

It’s a safe and supported arrangement, with Shared Lives in Adult Social Care taking references, checks and assessments to help ensure risk and safeguarding issues are well managed.

If you have a spare room and would be interested in having a chat about this, with no obligations, then please call Cath Ormerod on 0113 378 5410 or email homeshare@leeds.gov.uk.  More details can be found here Homeowner leaflet .

Ageing without Children – Our Voices

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Did you know that 1 in 5 people over 50 don’t have children and by 2030, there will be 2 million people over 65 without children.

Ageing without Children (AWOC), a charity that aims to help people ageing without children live a later life free of the free fear of ageing alone and being without support, recently held their Annual Conference in Leeds.  This is a topic under reported and under researched and they have produced  an interesting report called “Our Voices – the experiences of people ageing without children”  to raise its profile.

AWOC defines people ageing without children as people over the age of 50 without children in their lives either because they have never been parents or because their children have died, they are estranged from them or they live far away.

 Our Voices details the experiences and thoughts of this previously invisible group of older people.  This report offers more than thinking about who will provide support, help and care to those without children.  People ageing without children say they feel invisible and marginalised –  lacking a place in a family orientated society.  AWOC explain that the report aims to give room for just a few of the stories of people ageing without children to be heard, and that it is time to start to hear more.

Here’s AWOC’s report, our-voices-3 AWOC which can also be downloaded on their website http://awoc.org/ or email ageingwithoutchildren@gmail.com