Counter-narratives of active aging: Disability, trauma, and joy in the age-friendly city

Abstract

Dominant narratives about late life promote active aging, while anti-aging ones mobilize tropes of decline and irrelevance. In contrast, counter-narratives raise questions that spark new conversations about the promising practices that could foster more age-friendly cities. In this article, we describe our feminist and ethnographic approach to interviews and digital storytelling that aim to amplify the voices of marginalized older adults living with disability, violence, and colonialism, and share findings from this endeavor. We discuss the interviews with, and stories shared, by two disabled older adults - an Indigenous woman and a white paraplegic man - and the aging futures their counter-stories suggest. These stories reveal these participants' ongoing struggles to create meaning in their lives, and how their relationships to the physical, cultural, and social environment of the city, including its supports and services, can both support and hinder this becoming.