This article is brought to you by the Editorial Board of ASA’s LGBT Aging Issues Network (LAIN)

by Teri Worman

You know you’re onto something when you work on an article and find your computer’s auto spell check wants to keep changing the first word in your title. Revisioning is a word my computer doesn’t recognize, and a concept ASA’s LGBT Aging Issues Network (LAIN) has been exploring, and come to embrace, over the past year—thanks to a generous grant from the Arcus Foundation.

In 2010, the LAIN Leadership Council brought together leaders from the LGBT and straight ally communities for a retreat to wrestle with the limitations and exclusions of traditional aging paradigms. We understand the experiences and work our communities are doing can bring valuable models to the current overburdened aging service and caregiving systems. We started a dialog to revision what an all-inclusive, vibrant, interdependent aging movement would look like.

Out of the two-day retreat came a vision statement that set the stage for our work over the next year, and laid the basis for our LAIN constituent group workshop at the ASA conference in San Francisco in 2011:

“Vision: Various members of the LGBT community and the burgeoning LGBT aging movement have gathered to begin a conversation on the particular needs and perspectives of the aging LGBT community in order to partner with the larger Aging network and its many years of work in the Aging field.

We come from communities and have benefitted from our collective work and wisdom. As LGBT people, we bring a particular set of experiences which are informed by our sexuality, gender identity, race, ethnicity, families of choice, class and common struggle.

We offer these learnings about the importance of respect for diversity to help enrich the evolution of the universal aging movement.

As a result, we hope to promote authenticity, self determination, and interdependence for individuals and communities over the whole life span.”

Our 2011 workshop “Revisioning Aging: Creating New Models for Meeting the Needs of Today’s Older Adults,” allowed us to take the dialog to a broader audience. We had heard often enough from colleagues in traditional aging networks that the current system was not nearly inclusive enough. They understood it often limited their ability to serve single or childless individuals, and couples from non-dominant cultural groups, LGBT people among them, who rely on non-biological families (families of choice) for caregiving and support.

Our panel offered insights into how care from families of choice and interdependent social support networks benefit elders and caregivers. It also explored ways in which experiencing oppression can lead to greater strength and resilience in older age. Throughout the half-day workshop, the panel provided tangible examples of work being done by LGBT people and other marginalized groups that could help to expand and invigorate traditional aging services.

Our panelists included: Richard Gollance, licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Los Angeles; Glen-Michael Francis, Executive Director of GRIOT Circle in New York City; Barbara Satin, Faithworker Associate with National Gay & Lesbian Task Force from Minneapolis; and Ed Long, Deputy Director for the LTC and Aging Services Division, California Department on Aging.

Through this dialog, our panel reflected on the guiding principles developed at our retreat (see end of story).

The LAIN retreat modeled one of the key themes from the panelists, whose words follow in quotes.

Right now, there is “a norm where if you are not at the table, your voice is not heard.” To create authentic change, we must “expand the ‘we’ and not leave anyone on the fringes.” Conversations should not only be about “who has suffered more,” but also about “building bridges and finding commonalities of experience, even within our differences.” Clearly, we must also “strive to work better together and actively reach out to communities of color,” so that “we do not become the ‘second’ guest to the table.”

The panel also offered lessons from the history and experiences of the LGBT community. Today’s older adult population no longer reflects the decades-old idea of the traditional biological family structure. Providers find it increasingly difficult to pigeon-hole people into service models that do not reflect the true nature of their chosen family structures. Workshop participants were encouraged to “take a page from the history and work on HIV/AIDS,” and “fight for what you need!” Our history has documented the “support and structures built from the non-biological family system of our community that served us well when the medical and social service worlds did not step up to help.” Our “lifelong experiences at creating and sustaining families of choice” are models that can serve the whole of a vibrant aging movement.

The beauty of our differences was evident in our discussions of the “T” in our community—transgender elders. Transgender individuals are “beautifully and wonderfully made,” yet we know that “Nobody will touch my body!” is a reality too often felt by those confronting the need for social and medical care. Even within our own community, often GLB (gay, lesbian and bisexual) individuals know little about transgender elders, and the “Ts know little about ourselves—we are a hidden community.”

One of the difficulties for the transgender community is that it is “two decades behind the GLB communities—aging in the trans world is a new, uncharted thing—and we definitely need much more research.” But this new vision must “understand the difference we present—gender identity is not linear, not compartmentalized—it creates a broader rainbow of individuals,” which is another example of the expanding “we.”

A third common theme revolved around “building communities of interdependence rather than the (current American) model of independence that can actually become ‘aging in isolation’ for those of us who are from non-traditional communities.” This spirit of “rugged independence” can set up individuals for “failure in living independently,” especially when elders are hidden within the communities at large without traditional biological family structures. “Interdependence that celebrates autonomy and self over time,” with opportunities for “lifelong development,” is key. One model worth considering is the Village Movement, which celebrates “self governance and civic engagement; is consumer driven, and offers intergenerational connections.”

Finally, the panel reminded us that “we must show up and have conversations with allies, policymakers and each other—not just with demands, but to get to know each other, too. A new aging movement must “focus on strengths as well as needs,” and always ask, “What do others bring to the table?”

To become a movement that can truly serve elders, we must all work together to “make this a movement of equality—to become a broad rainbow of individuals together.” To embrace the “power of the potluck” that can “create peace, security, and respect for all.”

Terri Worman is the co-chair of LAIN Leadership Council and is the action chair of the LAIN editorial board. She also co-chairs the Chicago Task Force on LGBT Aging and is a community organizer for AARP Illinois.