Abstract
Spiritual and religious struggles emerge in times where life meaning is unclear, has changed or is challenged. Resilience has been addressed in terms of psychological, social, emotional and physical capacity or competence related to struggle. However, there is a relatively sparse literature defining and addressing spiritual resilience, both what it is and how it is demonstrated. This is especially true of the oppressive and marginalised experiences of diverse older persons. This paper asks how older persons have responded to life challenge and spiritual struggle through spiritually resilient responses. It provides a foundation for the discussion of spiritual resilience in older people through examples from two different community studies: 55 LGBQ older dyads across several nations, and 75 older Black and Jewish persons residing in Chicago, IL. The first study highlights same-sex couples, discussing the complex relationship of sexuality and religion and how resilience is achieved. The second study addresses religious/spiritual struggle using a life course perspective to note where spiritual resilience has been an outcome. Spiritual resilience is at the heart of posttraumatic and stress-related growth and often emerges through a process of lived transformation leading to greater self-awareness and self-understanding in a revised construction of identity.
Highlights
The experience of aging is often stereotyped and stigmatised (Bugental and Hehman 2007; Busso et al 2019; Simpson 2016)
About 30 years later and two years before his own death, Butler signaled the importance of breaking through fears of aging, dependency and death while re-orienting to the richness embedded in studying the length of the life course (Butler 2008)
The following section of the paper illustrates examples from two different studies: LGBQ older adult spousal narratives collected in the UK, US and Canada and highlights from a study of religion and spirituality among older Black and Jewish people from Chicago in the US
Summary
The experience of aging is often stereotyped and stigmatised (Bugental and Hehman 2007; Busso et al 2019; Simpson 2016). Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (Crenshaw 1991) work on intersectionality reminds us that identity and experience in later life are likely to be marked by the intersections between ageism, sexism, racism and other forms of oppression. This adds further layers, and potentially resources for, the quest for spiritual resilience in later life, since this suggests that spiritual resilience may arise in response to any of these experiences.
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