specialty focus that empathy or a deeper recognition of the problem . I ’ ve been thinking how do I amplify the voices of my participants ? How do I create some empathy , and respect , and recognition for loneliness in later life ? And so , faced with this ageism and this understanding of loneliness in a very , I would say , restricted way , I thought , ‘ What about creative writing ?’
The idea came to me when I was reading the book Extinction by Josephine Wilson . In this book , she talks about ageing and institutionalisation , and she ’ s able to capture a lot of my research in a very engaging and empathic way . Of course , when I present my research , I do so in a more dry , academic , and clinical way .
So I reached out to Josephine and told her about my research . I sent her some of my scientific papers and I asked her , ‘ Could you help me write the stories of my participants ? Could we together think about ways of communicating this research in a respectful and empathic way ?’
She was really excited about my invitation . I sent her the transcripts of the interviews with my participants . I also sent her the audio file so she could listen to their voices . And I sent her all my field notes of the six months in aged care facilities . And we chose two of our participants to experiment with this way of bringing together science and art .
Josephine crafted two narratives based on the stories of Gurney and Patricia , two pseudonyms selected by the two participants living in Victoria . There is a part of the story of Gurney which is based on his interests . He was a very funny participant . He had an amazing sense of humour that ’ s also a coping mechanism because he was extremely lonely . Josephine tried to capture that in the story . He has this passion for aviation and planes . And so , in this fantasy story that Josephine wrote , there is a part where he actually escapes the nursing home in a plane , so she tried to capture that humour and also his interests .
The other story of Patricia is also based on her interview . Her experience of loneliness is very different from Gurney ’ s . It ’ s more about the way that she sees the world outside of the
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Josephine ’ s writing told me so much more about my own research .
aged care facility . I ’ ve interviewed her in her room , and she was always mentioning what was outside her window . She had this attachment to the trees outside . It was the only sign of happiness that she had . It was a constant presence in her life .
Barbosa Neves says she came to realise the greater potential of creative writing , both in ageing research , and forming a better understanding of the lives of people living in residential facilities . My main aim was to be able to communicate my research in a better way . But what I gained from this collaboration was much more than that . Josephine ’ s writing told me so much more about my own research , and about the importance of combining sciences and arts to find out more about loneliness .
We know that loneliness is a very complex issue . We know it ’ s a very complex feeling . Older people are very diverse . And so it ’ s important to not see loneliness as something that is just one thing or one feeling . It is a mix of feelings associated , again , with that sense of lacking meaningful relationships , lacking social connectedness .
She made my role as a researcher more visible , from how we see participants to the language that I used . And she made my participants ’ experiences more visible in the sense of capturing the complexity of their stories and of life . So when I ’ m presenting my research , I ’ m much more linear in the way I communicate . The stories are much more complex .
It also brought to light things that I didn ’ t really explore in-depth before . Loneliness is also about touch , vision , memories , bodies , and movement , or lack of movement . So for Patricia , for example , her loneliness was always defined by the fact that she was in her room all the time , alone , and there was no movement inside her room . However , outside , things were happening all the time . With Gurney , Josephine really captured his sense of humour as a form of resistance , as a form of enhancing who he is as a person . And so I thought they were things that I was able to explore better after reading Josephine ’ s stories .
She now believes that creative writing can be used as a wider tool in aged care homes , to both alleviate the effects of loneliness and to build a greater understanding between workers and residents . We already have some research on the power of storytelling to help us process negative emotions and feelings . So I think this could be a way of helping people talking about loneliness , for example .
In my research I ’ ve asked participants what strategies they ’ ve put in place to cope with loneliness , but also what kind of initiatives or interventions could work for them . The main element they would emphasise is destigmatising loneliness and making it okay to talk about it . Even the possibility of reading , writing or commenting on these kinds of creative stories would be a good way of talking about that .
They hear terms that we sometimes associate with loneliness , such as , ‘ It ’ s an epidemic .’ Or they see loneliness as something that is pathologised . They also see it as a sign of personal failure : that they are not good enough to have friends or to talk to people , or maybe they ’ re not good enough in the sense that people don ’ t really care for them anymore .
Something that I saw that was really helpful from aged care staff would be to ask them about their interests . And so , a lot of our participants would say , ‘ I really like to read books , but now I ’ m just too frail .’ So , we can think about alternatives to provide them with the things that they like ; an audiobook , for example .
Aged care staff members are usually , as we know , overworked and underpaid . But I could see how they really care about their residents . Sometimes we could see how they were dismissing those negative emotions , because they thought being more positive would lead to more positive thoughts .
But we know that we have to be very careful about that kind of positivity . We need some positivity , of course , but we cannot engage in that kind of toxic positivity . People have to have space and time to talk about negative things . It ’ s okay to feel lonely . It ’ s okay to feel sad . And so I think creative writing , creative stories , reading , book clubs could be a way of facilitating those conversations . ■ agedcareinsite . com . au 23