A conversation on ageing beyond stereotypes.

“When I see some of the support networks around, they seem to assume that maybe you’re a couple, you may have grandchildren or great-grandchildren supporting you. And it’s very different when you’re on your own.”

– Penny Sharples

When we first met Penny through Lively several years ago, she immediately stood out for her thoughtful, candid reflections on ageing and her willingness to challenge assumptions. She later joined Lively’s Brains Trust, helping shape Lively’s work with her honest feedback and curiosity.

In this conversation, Penny reflects on retirement, living alone and community, and what it means to grow older in a society that often relies on stereotypes rather than real stories.

Anna:
To kick us off Penny, I’m wondering if you’d be happy to share how old you are, and where you feel that you’re at in the journey of your life and ageing.

Penny:
I’m 73. I retired seven years ago and I’ve been navigating this moving into retirement. One of the things I found was that a lot of the services have been built around a particular narrative that I didn’t fit into. I am a single woman. I don’t have any family around me. All my family are interstate. And a lot of my friends after COVID either left the state or passed away. And so I found myself in a situation with a very narrow group of support networks around me, and it’s continued to get smaller as we age.

When I see some of the support networks around, they seem to assume, generally speaking, that maybe you’re a couple, you may have grandchildren or great-grandchildren supporting you. And it’s very different when you’re on your own. So I sort of feel I’m in a particular stream, which I don’t think is really clearly understood. 

It’s very hard to look back, but I did think my senior years would be a little bit different from what they are. In my fifties, I didn’t think I would be a single woman at this time of my life, you know? Thought I’d be living this part of my life with a partner doing the things we love to do. And that hasn’t eventuated. 

Anna:

There are quite a lot of women out there who are in that situation, who’ve sort of found themselves newly single in their 50s for various reasons. And there’s a bit of a movement towards co-housing communities and deciding to live together and support each other. I’m curious what your feeling about those sorts of models is.

Penny:

I think it’s wonderful actually that there are those models. If you can find the right community, if you can find a group of people with at least some shared interests. And I suppose I’m not your typical woman at this age with children and grandchildren.

My life has taken me in a different direction. And my son is living his best life but there’s no sense of grandchildren or anything on the horizon. And even if there were, I can’t see myself as being one of those doting grandmothers where it becomes my world. It’s not my world. So I think those co-communities are brilliant for those that have got at least some shared interests and that’s the key for me. I mean, it’s not as easy to bring your community around you at this stage. It takes a lot of work when you don’t have the energy to do that type of work. 

Anna:

You talked about that not being your world. And I’m curious, how do you describe your world? What’s the stuff that gives you passion and purpose?

Penny:

So I’ve been getting involved in art, but my art’s very different. It doesn’t fall into the commercial range. So that actually puts me in a different stream again. I’m very interested in things like philosophy and European mythology and I like to read and travel. They’re the things that I’m interested in. 

Last year I went to Japan, but I went on a specific tour which was just ten days of art out on the islands where there’s a big Triennale which happens every three years. And I met some nice people there, but not necessarily in my age group. So yes, I’ve got different interests and I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there going, yeah, I share those interests too. I just haven’t discovered them yet. 

Anna:

I remember one of the first conversations that we had, you were raging about the menu of seniors activities and why it is that suddenly people turn fifty and they’re offered bingo and whatever else and just this very small range of activities. And I think you said at the time something like, where do I talk about philosophy with people? 

Penny:

That’s right. I have been joining different groups and I went and joined a group and we studied for two and a half years and then I stepped aside. But I was the eldest one there.

And I’ve made a couple of friends, but they’re a lot younger, which is great because that’s one of the things that I crave, different generations in my life. So at that time when I did that rage I had not long before seen an ad about some residential care providing entertainment, which was people sitting around a piano singing one of The Andrews Sisters songs, sitting in single rooms crocheting or little walks around the garden. I was thinking, that’s not what I want to sing around the piano, I want to sing a Rolling Stones song. It was such a narrow view of what our generation was about. 

I’ve noted that the marketing people have caught on to this notion and now they’ve got them dressed funky ways and jumping into sports cars and zooming around. And it ties into that trope that us baby boomers have all the money and can afford the sports car and go traveling and do this and do that. And that’s not necessarily the case for everybody. 

Anna:

It seems to me that that trope is really growing, this kind of intergenerational warfare and tension and this real anti-boomer sentiment. And as you say, this new image of the cashed up luxury old age lifestyle plays into that. It just kind of erases and obscures the reality of so many people’s actual experience and there’s a real class element in that. We don’t talk about class much in Australia, but it is. 

Penny:

There’s very much this separating into them and us, and it’s around everything from your financial status, your age, your background. And that’s being driven a lot by certain aspects of the media and politicians. I suppose it’s always been around, but it seems to be highlighted at the moment. So our age group is going to be impacted by that because there is this you’re either part of this generation or that generation and this generation did this to this generation and it’s part of that bigger picture of really pitting one part of society against the other. It’s all pervasive. It’s everywhere. 

Anna:

I know that one of the things that people really hone in on is home ownership. And interestingly, the boomer generation doesn’t hold the most housing wealth out of generations in Australian society. It’s actually Gen X, but the boomers are positioned as the ones who are hoarding the houses and making it impossible for young people to get into the market. Of course there are little bits of truth in these things. But it also obscures the fact that when you look at people who are sitting in a home that they own at the age of sixty, there are years and years and years of work that’s led to that point. 

Penny:

And it is that looking at people at the same time period. You know I wish there were more people that were curious that would say, you’re lucky you’ve got a home. Tell me how you managed that. What did you have to do to get your own home? Then they’ll find out that I’ve worked two jobs and I was paying 17 and three quarter percent interest rate over many, many, many years. I thought it was Christmas when it finally dropped down to thirteen percent interest rate. 

My girlfriend and I were talking about when we started out, we had mattresses on the floor and cardboard boxes for bedside tables. We didn’t have TVs. We didn’t have phones. If we wanted to make a phone call, we walked up to the phone box. If we wanted to watch TV we went around to a friend’s place who had one. They’re different experiences. 

I do think every generation gets projected on, including the younger generations. This projecting on and trying to delineate how they’re different from me, from others, seems to be this narrative around the world at the moment. It seems to be a lot of talk about community and how important it is, but that seems to be drowned out by the screaming very loudly about excluding people that don’t look like you. And so we’ve got these double narratives in society, which I think is making it very hard for anyone to navigate.

Anna:

Which as you were sort of saying before, it feels like at this time what we need is all people of different ages and experiences and perspectives actually coming together to help figure out a way through the challenges rather than arguing about who’s got it better off. So zooming back in on you, I’m curious just from where you sit now and as you look ahead, what are the things that you feel hopeful about and what are the things that are challenging?

Penny:

Certainly for me at the moment what’s challenging is my health and the notion that I am not going to ever be without pain again and I’m not going to have a young fit body that can bounce around. So I find that aspect challenging because while the body’s ageing and deteriorating, I’m fortunate that the brain’s still relatively okay. So my brain’s still saying you can climb that mountain and the body’s saying, you know, sit down and take a cup of tea. So that’s a challenge. It really is.

And this links to something I was saying earlier about creating a community around me at this age, which is supportive, that I can rely on and in a mutual way that we support each other. So that’s a bit of a challenge for me.

What I am hopeful about is some of the younger people that I’ve met, a couple through Lively. I’ve had some fantastic conversations and I thoroughly enjoy being with them, particularly those that are interested in sharing their stories and listening to mine. And that gives me hope for the future, that there are these curious young people who are energetic and getting out into the world and really want to make a difference. 

I’m also very grateful that I live here in Melbourne, Australia. We have wonderful medical facilities here and I realise how privileged I am to live in this place. So that’s something I’m very grateful for. Because you know they’ve got a lot to deal with, I’m keeping them all well and employed. 

Anna:

I read something the other day which stood out to me. I was reading a book about eldership called Come of Age, and the guy who writes it, Stephen Jenkinson, is sort of older himself and he talked about this idea of deepening through diminishment and how the experience of physical decline and challenges that you are talking about can actually lead to a deepening of the spirit and the soul. 

Penny:

Yeah, that’s quite a profound statement, but yeah it resonates with me. It’s a big question. And because of my reading in philosophy at the moment I’m into the Stoics. And part of what I’m learning is just taking each day as it comes, and just thinking of the abundance that you have as opposed to the scarcity that you don’t. And that links into some of that generational dialogue that’s going on around the world. Instead of looking at what others have, thinking about what you have and what you have is enough now. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around that.

And there’s still a lot that you can contribute, but it may not be in such a public overt, extroverted way. It’s quiet reflections that you can share with people. The guidance you can give to your loved ones when things are difficult, you can be that steady hand there. And sometimes the best advice you can give is a hug. You know, just sort of saying, I’m here.

That’s sort of what I’m feeling at the moment. If you ask me in a couple of weeks’ time, it might be a bit of a different answer.