The Big Move: Life Between the Turning Points by Ruth Ray Karpen

The Big Move: Life Between the Turning Points Reviews

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  BookBec

  Anne's story was excellent: concise, insightful, hopeful.
  But it was so specific to one person and one continuing-care center.
  I wish this book had offered a diversity of viewpoints: a variety of people with a variety of personalities and a variety of motivations who transitioned into a variety of residences.
• 
  Margaret

  When I first heard Anne Wyatt-Brown tell her story (the core of The Big Move), I immediately said, This must be a book. I helped the group find a publisher, and then wrote the Afterword (and annotated a list of "care-home" novels, from fiction about the "tragically ailing" to the romcom). The title is my suggestion too.
  I strongly believed, and still do, that I want to die in my queen-sized bed in my own gorgeous Victorian, where I have lived for 45 years and painted almost every wall twice. But Anne's story gives anyone who feels that way an exhilarating sense of expanded options.
  She moved into a CCRC, a continuing care retirement community--she had to move, because of her husband's condition--and she overcame her ageism and ableism and found a good way of being. She writes well, and so do the experts who chose to comment on her succinct and persuasive text.
  --Margaret
  
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  Phi Beta Kappa Authors

  Margaret Morganroth Gullette
  ΦBK, Radcliffe College, 1962
  Afterword
  
  From the publisher: When her husband's ill health forces them to move into an assisted living facility, Anne M. Wyatt-Brown suddenly finds herself surrounded by elderly residents. In this lively and provocative collection, other distinguished gerontologists reflect on Anne's moving account of her transition to becoming a member of a vibrant and sociable community that offers care-giving support, while encouraging her to pursue her own interests, including exercising, reviewing articles for scholarly journals, serving on committees, and singing. By redefining notions of care and community, undoing the stigmas of aging, and valuing the psychological factors involved in accepting assistance, this volume provides a bold new framework for thinking about aging, continuing care, making the big move to a retirement community, and living with vitality in the new environment.