At the end of 2014, my husband and I sold every last pot and pan, every stick of furniture we owned – we even sold my house. To fund a year-long adventure overseas. Eight months later, I was forced to return to Australia under terrible circumstances. My husband had shockingly, and unexpectedly, died from a heart attack in Portugal. Obviously, there is no good time for your husband to die, especially in a foreign country, but death came for him at the worst possible time for me.
Our arrogant assumption was that, once the money had run out, we’d simply pick up jobs and accommodation back home. But this proved impossible. We’d used up all our savings. I had no job. And, critically, I was alone.
In Australia, owning your own home is part of our cultural identity. But even amid the current dip in house prices, which is expected to be shallow and short-lived, finding an affordable place to rent or buy is near impossible. Meanwhile, an extra 10,000 Australians are becoming homeless each month, up 22% in three years, according to a recent report from UNSW and Homelessness Australia. Homelessness, variously defined as living on the street, occupying unsafe accommodation or having no fixed or residential address, is now broadly recognised as the rising issue for women aged over 55. We are the fastest growing demographic in Australia that experiences homelessness.
There are piles of government reports that detail the problem, taskforces trying to suggest solutions, even an ABC documentary showing the struggle older Australian women face trying to find secure housing. A lifetime of entrenched financial disadvantage (lower wages, lower levels of superannuation, less savings, a lack of assets), in addition to marriage breakdowns, mental health issues, domestic violence and death of a spouse, can all contribute to why women suddenly find themselves without a roof over our heads.
Nine years ago these statistics applied to me. What saved me in the end were friends and family.
For three months I couch surfed: stayed with my son (and his tribe of generous housemates), then slept in my mother-in-law’s spare room, and for the longest time (about six weeks) my brother’s family put me up. When some travel insurance was released, these people helped move me to a country town, where I rented a small cottage and furnished it with borrowed goods.
Family and friends who are invested in one’s happiness make the principal difference in older women evading long-term homelessness.
Luckily, my homelessness was temporary. The psychological damage was far worse than the tangible. I never lived on the streets. I never felt physically unsafe. I was never cold. And I always had enough to eat. My people gave me time to find my feet. Then, in that little house in the country, I grieved and healed, worried about money, applied for work, scrubbed my clothes in the sink and wrote a significant section of a book. That private space encouraged better health, a return to dignity, the mental room to create and a place to step from into new friendships and support networks.
Having your own home, even your own room, equates to freedom and necessary privacy. For how can we fully be who we are if we don’t have the time, the liberty and the space to sit with ourselves alone? To be, we need a door that closes. A door that holds back the trials of the world. After coming home to Australia, I explained to anyone who asked that Maslow was correct. The most vital human need is physiological. And it truly is enough. For a time, it is everything.
I find that growing old is a humbling experience. The brilliant and terrible knowledge I’ve gained about myself and about humanity – health concerns that pick at my pride, the looming spectre of death and all those dreadful mistakes I’ve made over a tumultuous lifetime – ageing has created a world more daunting but also made richer through my gratitude and growing acceptance. And being on your own (I would not have it any other way) adds to life’s complexity.
Writing this piece, nearly a decade on, I could cry for the ordinary contentment I now experience from simply catching the sun through the glass on a summer’s day, at night collapsing on to my sofa in front of bad TV, or throwing fresh sheets on my bed on Sunday mornings. And my hope is that all older women find such peace in a place they call their own.
Source link