By Malia Wollan — 2018
Remember that it’s not about you.
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
Accepting and sharing your gender or sexual identity is always a complex, emotional journey. Coming out later in life comes with some unique challenges — and some benefits, too
Though pop culture often portrays queer people successfully coming out young, a generation of our closeted LGBTQ elders might disagree.
They reflect on rewards, challenges of living authentically.
The key challenges facing aging LGBT adults center around: chronic health care, caregiving, financial security for long-term care, social isolation, building resiliency and where to find trusted help.
When I retired from clinical practice several years ago, I let go into the unknown. I felt tentative, uncertain, yet knowing intuitively that I needed to heed the call.
More and more women are discovering after years of marriage to men, and having had children, that they are lesbians. Were they always—or is sexuality more fluid?
One of Erikson’s most important contributions was to describe this as a psychosocial phenomenon—an interaction between someone’s sense of who he or she is as a person and society’s recognition of that person as an individual.
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According to a study recently published in The Gerontologist, older people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer often face discrimination during end-of-life care. They’re also more likely to have their health care wishes ignored or disregarded.