Preparing Ourselves for Unexpected Change: Let’s say you live alone, perhaps

with a cherished pet for company, and wake up in the middle of the night with an

alarming tightness in your chest. Concerned that it could by a symptom of a heart

attack, you call 911 and are taken by ambulance to the nearest emergency room.

After some tests, it is determined that you need heart surgery and will be

hospitalized for some days followed by a period of bed rest at home.

Who will look after your pet while you are in the hospital? Who will look in on

you while you are recuperating at home? Who will do your shopping, pick up your

prescriptions, do your laundry, and drive you to follow-up appointments? Like

preparing for an earthquake, we need to have a plan in place for unexpected age-

related changes.

Evaluating Our Capacity for Change: Studies being done of LGBT elders are

finding that the challenges we have faced as a minority have made us more

resilient. Our lives have been full of experiences that tested us, some of them

planned, but many of them unexpected. What qualities did we possess or learn that

enabled us to cope with those challenges and perhaps even grow from them? Was

it keeping a sense of humor? Was it resourcefulness? Could it have been

stubbornness, persistence or even anger that called forth the courage and skills we

needed? When facing an unexpected and challenging change, it helps to remember

what got us through past ones!

Choosing Our Responses to Change: Whenever we are confronted with a

challenging situation, we have a spectrum of choices ranging between the two

extremes of resistance and surrender. Our responses can range from (1) a “flight

or fight” reaction of denying or attacking the problem to (2) finding ways to

modify the situation to (3) learning ways we might adapt to the situation to (4)

learning to simply accept and live with the situation. However these are not

necessarily stages or phases that we move through from one to the other. More

than likely we will find ourselves employing all these responses simultaneously,

finding parts of the situation we may be able to ignore or modify while also

making adjustments in the way we perceive and accommodate it.

In my next blog, “Knowing Where to Turn,” we will look at how we can identify

resources that may help us continue to meet our changing needs as we age.

Please join us on June 23 rd 4 – 6 pm at Rossi’s in Sonoma for a “Gay Pride Tea

Dance and Mixer” for LGBT Seniors!

Buz Hermes is co-facilitator of the Sonoma Valley LGBT Seniors Group and a former staff

member of Spectrum’s Senior Outreach Program. He is currently offering 8-week “Aging

Together With Pride” workshops sponsored by Adult and Aging Services for LGBT seniors. He can be reached at [email protected] or (707) 227-6935