Journal of Aging Studies 34 (2015) 155–161

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Journal of Aging Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging

Narrative and resilience: A comparative analysis of how older adults story their lives William Randall a,1, Clive Baldwin b, Sue McKenzie-Mohr c, Elizabeth McKim d, Dolores Furlong e a

Department of Gerontology, St. Thomas University, Miami, FL, USA Canada Research Chair in Narrative Studies, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada School of Social Work, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada d Department of English, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada e Faculty of Nursing, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada b c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 2 October 2014 Accepted 21 February 2015 Available online 19 March 2015 Keywords: Resilience Aging Adversity Narrative Narrative gerontology Biographical aging

a b s t r a c t Of increasing interest to gerontologists is resilience: the capacity for coping with the challenges of later life with openness and positivity. An overlooked factor in resilience, however, is the narrative complexity of older persons' self-accounts. The research on which this article is based is part of a larger project aimed at assessing the role of narrative interventions in strengthening the stories that older people tell about their lives. Presented here are preliminary findings from analyses conducted by our multidisciplinary team (representing gerontology, social work, nursing, dementia studies, and literary theory) on open-ended life story interviews done with 20 community-dwelling individuals (15 F, 5 M; aged 65–89 years) who completed the Connor Davidson Resilience Scale. Specifically, we compared the self-accounts of the 6 from these 20 who scored highest on the CDRS with the 7 who scored lowest to determine any patterns in how each group “stories” their lives. We conclude with certain observations of relevance to narrative care. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Narrative and resilience While many older adults inspire us with their capacity to keep positive and open—even thriving—amid the challenges and adversities life places in their path, others faced with similar challenges will succumb to depression or despair, to some form of “arrested aging” (McCullough, 1993) or “narrative foreclosure” (Bohlmeijer, Westerhof, Randall, Tromp, & Kenyon, 2011): the conviction that their life story has effectively ended (Freeman, 2010). What, we can ask, leads one person to age in one way and another person to age so differently? One answer is resilience. Defined as “a dynamic process of maintaining positive adaptation and effective coping strategies in the face of adversity” (Allen, Haley, Harris, Fowler, & Pruthi, 2011, p. 1), resilience is characterized “by the ability to bounce back from

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E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Randall). Tel.: +1 506 452 0632.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2015.02.010 0890-4065/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

negative emotional experiences and by flexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences” (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004, p. 320). Two recent collections (Fry & Keyes, 2010; Resnick, Gwyther, & Roberto, 2011) outline several factors that feed resilience in later life. These range from physical health to emotional regulation, from educational level and overall mental fitness to personality traits, social networks, and cultural or spiritual resources. Little attention has been paid so far, however, to the narrative factors that may also feed resilience. This paper draws on the field of narrative gerontology (see Birren, Kenyon, Ruth, Schroots, & Svensson, 1996; Kenyon, Clark, & deVries, 2001) to explore the hypothesis that older adults who score high on resilience will “story” their lives in identifiable ways (Kenyon, Bohlmeijer, & Randall, 2011). Compared to those of low scorers, that is, their self-narratives will be thicker and richer, more detailed and complex in nature, and—so to speak—stronger overall. As a corollary to this hypothesis, then, people's resilience will be augmented to

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the extent that their stories are strengthened through some mode of “narrative care” (Bohlmeijer, Kenyon, & Randall, 2011; Randall, 2012), whether reminiscence, life review, guided autobiography, psychotherapy, or simply soulful conversation—any activity, that is, in which deep storytelling is elicited through deep story listening. Before presenting our research and what it implies for the practice of narrative care, we first need to acknowledge existing theory and research that is relevant to the connection we are proposing between narrative and resilience. Relevant research and theory Staudinger, Marsiske, and Baltes (1995) have argued that people who are especially resilient in later life have access to a range of “identity projects” and “possible selves” (p. 818). “Psychological resilience in old age,” echo Bauer and Park (2010), “is intimately tied to self-identity” (p. 60), where self-identity is inseparable, that is, from self-narrative. For McAdams (2001), in other words, the very concept of “identity” requires understanding in narrative terms. “Identity,” he says, “is a lifestory” (p. 643, emphasis his), namely, “an internalized and evolving personal myth that functions to provide life with unity and purpose” (McAdams, 1996, p. 132). More to the point, work on our narrative identity continues all life long, aging being no exception. Indeed, the changes and challenges that come with later life—retirement, bereavement, disability, relocation, loss—can constitute challenges to our very sense of self. Chief among these are challenges to our sense of existential meaning (see Reker & Chamberlain, 2000). Thus, insofar as narrative is our principal vehicle for making such meaning (Polkinghorne, 1988), how we “story” (Kenyon et al., 2011) our lives is of pivotal importance. Implicit in discussions of narrative identity, in the context of either development or therapy, are assumptions concerning a “good lifestory.” McAdams (2001), plus others (see Baur, 1994; Coleman, 1999; Polster, 1987) have proposed that the “goodness” of a life story can be assessed according to such criteria as coherence, credibility, differentiation, openness, and generative integration. Coherence means that the stories that we tell about our lives, both to others and ourselves, essentially make sense. They hang together; they co-here. Credibility suggests that our self-stories should reflect the actual facts of our lives, which is to say, should not omit vast chunks of our past nor ignore the obvious realities of our world. Differentiation implies that the more varied our story is (the more themes it reflects, and the more episodes, subplots, and selves it contains), then the better it is. As mentioned before, Staudinger et al. (1995) link resilience to a range of “identity projects” and “possible selves,” which points to the criterion of openness for a better life story, one that is flexible and capable of expanding or deepening, of continuous “restorying” (Kenyon & Randall, 1997). Of particular relevance to our purposes here, therefore, is research by Steunenberg and Bohlmeijer (2011) into older adults suffering from depression, a condition associated with recalling predominantly negative memories about their lives in an “overgeneral” manner (pp. 295–296). Engaging such individuals in reminiscence activities that encourage them to recall memories that are both positive and specific increases their sense of mastery enhances their experience of meaning, and lessens their symptoms of depression (Korte, Cappeliez,

Bohlmeijer, & Westerhof, 2012). In effect, it counters whatever narrative foreclosure they may be experiencing and helps to re-open their stories, “narrative openness” being “a prerequisite for development of identity in later life” (Bohlmeijer, Westerhof, & Lamers, 2014, p. 2). Finally, generative integration, which combines the Eriksonian concepts of “generativity” and “ego integrity,” means that our self-story reaches beyond the boundaries of our own unique self and connects with, or gives back to, the evolving stories of others, our community, and our world. Granted, the idea of life stories being deemable as “good” (or “bad”) deserves critique (see Hyvärinen, Hydén, Saarenheimo, & Tamboukou, 2010, on the criterion of “coherence” alone; see also Baldwin, 2006, on the “narrative dispossession” of persons with dementia), for it carries with it comparable baggage as does the concept of “successful” aging. Nonetheless, various theorists, researchers, and practitioners uphold the claim that some stories can be heralded as “better” than others in a particular time and place (see McAdams, 2008), based in part on what they do (Frank, 2010), specifically on being more advantageous for the person(s) under consideration (Quosh & Gergen, 2008). Such scholars have highlighted the connection between how we story our lives and how we live our lives, which is to say between the quality of our personal narrative and our overall health and wellbeing (Birren & Deutchman, 1991; Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999; Rybarczyk & Bellg, 1997; Wingard & Lester, 2001). Also pertinent to the narrative-resilience link is the research of Jennifer Pals (2006) on people's use of “exploratory narrative processing” to make sense of difficult life experiences. Of importance here is the observation that, in general, negative events demand “more storytelling work” (McAdams, 2008, p. 253). A core finding of such research is that if we can narrate difficult episodes in our lives with “coherent positive resolution,” then the stories we weave around those episodes are more likely to become important self-defining memories, which in turn remind us of our ability to overcome adversity (Pals, 2006). Conversely, the inability to achieve positive resolution is linked to low levels of “ego-resiliency” (p. 1079). Other research suggests that, in general, our capacity for “autobiographical reasoning”—for making sense of past or present events in terms of our life as a whole—becomes more sophisticated with advancing years (Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006). Also, changes in our aging brains themselves contribute to our increased ability to regulate our emotions (Cohen, 2005, p. 14) and to be biased toward “positivity” (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005) in the memories that we see as central to our self, and in how we interpret more negative events as well. Related to this is the concept of “integrative reminiscence” (Wong, 1995), which involves accepting and interpreting “negative past experiences,” identifying experiences that have helped develop “personal values and meaning,” and creating coherence between one's present and past (pp. 24–25). Such reminiscence, it is argued, is most likely to be characteristic of “successful agers” (Wong & Watt, 1991). Equally pertinent to our hypothesis here is McAdams's (2006) work on the sorts of stories told by people who score high on generativity. Specifically, they tend to tell “redemptive sequences” when remembering difficult life events—that is, stories in which negatives get turned into positives and experiences that are initially bad issue in outcomes that are good (“I grew from this, learned from this, am better off

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because of this,” etc.). On the other hand, people who score low on generativity tend to tell stories with “contamination sequences” (p. 211) in which something initially good turns bad, or a positive beginning leads to a negative end. Insofar as generativity and resilience are related, the implications of this research for our own are thus instructive to keep in mind. Finally, research by Randall, Prior, and Skarborn (2006) has focused the important point that how one tells one's story depends in many ways on who it is that's listening. In effect, listeners shape what tellers tell—whether thick, rich stories about their lives or thin, impoverished ones instead. In this connection, Kotre (1984) has distinguished between “manifest” or told stories and “latent” or untold stories, what de Medeiros and Rubinstein (this issue) calls “shadow” stories, the implication being that the thickness of the stories elicited in a qualitative interview hinges on the richness of the “narrative environment” (Randall & McKim, 2008, pp. 50–57) that is created in the tellerlistener interactions. By the same token, it needs remembering that, whoever may be listening, a life story that gets told in an interview is always but one version only of the life story: the ever-elusive “whole story” that lies between the lines. Methods One hundred and sixteen community-dwelling older adults in or near the city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, were recruited to complete the Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003). The CDRS is a 25-item instrument consisting of positively worded statements such as “I like challenges” and “I can deal with whatever comes my way” to which one indicates how well each statement applies to oneself on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = “not true at all”; 4 = “true nearly all the time”), making 100 (4 × 25) the maximum score. Of the 116 questionnaires participants completed, six had missing responses, and so were deleted from the data set. We then conducted qualitative interviews with 45 of the 110 questionnaire respondents, namely, the fifteen highest scorers, the fifteen lowest, and the fifteen who were clustered around the mean. Interviewees were invited to share their life stories in an open-ended manner, with particular focus on how they had coped with adversity and on their views about the future. All but one of the forty-five interviews were conducted by the same person, injecting a continuity into the study that might otherwise be missing. Once the interviews were transcribed, we undertook narrative analyses of twenty of the forty-five transcripts (fifteen women, five men). Specifically, we analyzed six transcripts in the high category (CDRS = 95–100), seven in the middle (CDRS = 75–89), and seven in the low (CDRS = 32–69). The focus of our analyses was a range of overlapping features that pertain to how participants' self-accounts have been narratively constructed, or to what Ramsey and Bleiszner (2013) call “the ‘grammar’ of resilience” (p. 8). These features include the following: • the complexity of how they employ individual anecdotes (e.g., with thick descriptions or thin; with multiple subplots and layers or not); • the degree of detail and dialogue (e.g., “I said/she said”) included when telling their stories; • the ways that they begin the interview, and the stories they choose to tell first;

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• the narrative arc (i.e., beginning-middle-end structure) that is displayed in their telling both of individual anecdotes and of their life as a whole; • the genre or “narrative tone” (McAdams, 2001) that runs through what they say (e.g., tragedy or adventure, optimism or pessimism); • the degree of agency or authorship they appear to possess regarding their life or life story; • the way they characterize themselves in their stories (e.g., as victim, hero, etc.); • the sophistication of their autobiographical reasoning (e.g., part-whole, event-life); • the degree of narrative openness (vs. narrative foreclosure) that characterizes the views they have of their future and their past; • the frequency of “redemption” versus “contamination” sequences in what they recount; • the references they make to any larger stories or master narratives (e.g., those of religion, culture, or family) with which they identify or that inform how they make meaning in their lives; and • any telltale motifs, metaphors, or themes that run through what they say. Against the background of such features, and for the purposes of this article, we compared the self-accounts of the six highest scorers with those of the seven lowest to determine any telltale patterns in how members of each group “story” their lives (Kenyon et al., 2011). Highest scorers Of the participants in the high-scoring group, none were strangers to change and challenge, for all six referred to having endured various adversities (divorce, children dying, illness, disability, family conflict, etc.). By the same token, all indicated having a number of interests, involvements, or hobbies as well, which is to say a number of “identity projects.” All recounted what were recognizable as “redemptive sequences,” and all but one reported highly positive experiences of growing up. And all, in one way or another, made it clear that they feel they have a story to tell. At the same time, they seemed somewhat awkward about, or at least unaccustomed to, talking about their life as a whole or engaging in what Freeman calls “big story” activity, something which few of us, in fact, are ever invited to do in the course of our daily routines. Turning to more specific findings, high scorers' comments reflected a notable sense of narrative agency. One participant asserted, for instance, that “I’m a survivor, you’ve got to be,” words that suggest a perception of herself as a kind of tragic hero amid her own life drama. To this remark she added, “I’m hoping to write a book; it would be a trilogy, plus.” Similarly, other participants stated, “I always wanted to write about my life” and “I could write a book.” Still another responded to the interviewer's invitation to “tell me about your life” by saying simply, “That's a long story.” High scorers' descriptions also suggested a degree of narrative openness. One participant maintained that “life is an adventure” and that “aging is just part of the journey.” Another, reflecting on the state of the world in general, said, “I think things are going to get better and better” and “I’m excited about growing old.”

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“Things turn out right,” said another, while others said things like, “You just live one day at a time; just take it as it comes”; “You don’t know what's coming tomorrow, so you’ve got to make the best of today”; and “That's life for you; I leave it one day at a time.” This general sense of being open to whatever comes and of life being basically good is echoed by the strong positivity that comes through in such statements as “I’ve had so much love in my life. Been loved by a lot of good men … [I’ve] had a very good life”;“I had a great younger life … we really had a wonderful time … And I got married. And that was great too”; “I’ve done lots of interesting things … had a good life”; “I’m pretty happy with my own lot”; “Positive thinking … I think deep down I must have been born with that.” Comments like these reflect the upbeat narrative tone in much of what the high scorers said. Such optimistic and positive descriptions of their lives were plentiful in the interviews: “I remember a lot of the trials and tribulations I’ve had but … my laughter has kept me going”; “I always knew something good would happen eventually … I’m an optimist”; “I’ve had a busy life, a good life”; “I’m pretty happy with my own lot”; “I think we can change things and I think things happen for a reason.” As regards autobiographical reasoning, much of what the high scorers recounted took the form more of “narrative fragments” (Boje, 2008) than of extended passages in which they explained how they have made meaning of events in their lives. Nonetheless, we heard several comments like “Things happen for a reason” and “You know, things turn out right” interspersed through what they shared. While one participant said, “So many episodes, I can’t keep them straight … I haven’t thought about it enough,” the fact that she said this suggests her desire to think about it more. Perhaps the clearest indication of autobiographical reasoning is reflected in this comment: “My way of getting through rotten stuff is, okay, I can either let this harm me or I can learn,” followed later by her exclamation that “It's wonderful to make mistakes, you know.” In terms of master narratives, all high scorers made a number of statements that indicated their identification with a larger reality or cause than that of their own individual lives. Five referred explicitly to God; for example, “You know that God's behind you, or some higher power … that helps you through this”; “There is a creator and that creator is always there … in good times and bad.” One, however, referred to a greater reality of a more earth-bound nature: “Family and friends … that's what life's all about.” Judging from such comments, even if they elaborated little on the role that spirituality actually plays in their lives, the sense of having a relationship with a “higher power” was clearly evident in five of the six high scorers, and appeared to lend a rootedness, a meaningfulness, and a sense of existential security to their lives as a whole. Lowest scorers Compared with the highest scorers, the seven lowest present a more complex picture of the relationship between narrative and resilience. Of the seven in this group, three were men, and one of them in fact was the lowest scorer of all forty-five interviewees, receiving just 32 on the CDRS. All but two of the seven had decidedly negative or unresolved memories of their childhood. Three of them relayed “contaminated sequences,”

referred to experiences that lacked “coherent positive resolution,” or had what Pals (2006) calls a “closed-minimizing” (vs. “open-exploratory”) approach to interpreting difficult life events (p. 1090). Put another way, they displayed a tendency to engage in obsessive more than integrative reminiscence (Wong, 1995). In all but one case, the lowest scorers' comments reflected a less optimistic narrative tone than was the case with the highest ones, as if there was a woundedness about them, or a sad shadow hanging over their lives. As regards matters of spirituality and of drawing comfort or direction from an involvement in religion, the low scorers were, overall, more questioning and less certain as regards spiritual matters. One participant said, “You do have a faith that there is something beyond, but the more you hear, the more you start questioning,” while another went so far as to describe himself as an “evangelical atheist.” Turning to more specific findings concerning this group, we have chosen to include slightly lengthier excerpts from each of the seven to illustrate one or more of the general findings just noted, or the broad features outlined under “Method” above. We begin with the participant who scored lowest of all. When asked at the outset to tell the interviewer about his life, he replied somewhat combatively, “That's one awfully general question,” and then went on, “Well, let's see, I was born in [birthplace], which I don’t remember. I drove through once and considered it a dump. Grew up from the age of two in [city]. Finally came to [Canada] in ’53. I wandered around colleges, got my PhD in ’59, came out here as a [profession] and … all right, that’ll do.” Overall, there was a terse, bleak tone running through much of the remainder of the interview, and more than a hint of “contamination.” In addition to outlining a life that was thin in terms of close personal relationships, a number of his comments reflected a negative view of himself (various references to being “a coward” and feeling “ashamed”) and considerable pessimism toward the government, the future, and the prospects for planet Earth itself. “What are the odds,” he asked rhetorically at one point, “that Homo sapiens is extinct within two centuries?” When discussing a tumor that had been surgically removed a few years prior, his words have a strong hint of narrative foreclosure: “Of course it will [come back].” In what another participant (the “evangelical atheist”) shared during his interview, we find indications of a lack of “coherent positive resolution” (Pals, 2006) when he narrates difficult life experiences. “The major changes,” in his life, he says, “have been to do with personal life rather than professional life.” By way of example, “My mother died when I was fifteen My father moved away and my brother was at college … That was huge and I didn’t cope well with that at all.” “My first girlfriend,” he goes on, “was a relationship I didn’t deal well with at all.” Then, with what distinctly reflects a “closed-minimizing” approach (Pals, 2006) to dealing with difficulty, he adds, “We’ll gloss over that … I haven’t been good at dealing with breaking up relationships.” Another low scorer, when asked at the start to “tell me about your life,” began her story with what proved to be a central motif in her story, or what Spector-Mersel (2014) would call her “narrative identity card”—the theme, that is, of struggle and complexity. “My life has been very complicated,” she begins, but then rather than speak chronologically from her childhood forward, she immediately says, “I gave birth to triplets forty-three years ago, and one died within an hour, but the

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other two are profoundly disabled.” A few minutes later, she says that “when these guys were twelve … I ended up in the psychiatric ward with a total breakdown. My mum died as well and that just, the whole thing, finished me off.” With respect to her childhood, which she describes later in the interview, we again sense a lack of coherent positive resolution. “My dad left us when I was two and came back and left us and came back. My mother—it was war time, of course—what's the word? Promiscuous … So my brother is … another father; we don’t know whose he is.” The narrative tone running through the words of another low scorer reflect somewhat low self-esteem. “I’m not particularly smart,” he says early on, and goes on to convey the sense of someone who doesn’t have an especially strong sense of narrative agency. The good things that have happened in his life are due more to luck than anything else. “I’ve been really fortunate … we’ve been really fortunate,” he says. Concerning the early stages in his life story, we have the impression of a person who still bears the scars of those difficult times. “[It] wasn’t a particularly easy childhood,” he says. “My father … was a fighting drunk … He kicked my rear a number of times and I spent a few nights sitting on the stands [of the ball diamond] when I didn’t want to go home … But, you know,” he adds, “you get over that, and you learn to live with it. It was a rough childhood but it wasn’t, you know, no rougher than what most kids have, I guess.” His added words, “I guess,” however, suggest that while he's wanting to put his own life in perspective compared to what others experience, the matter is still not quite resolved. With our fifth lowest scorer, a similar narrative tone is present, perhaps stemming from an unresolved sadness from her experiences as a child. Although during the interview as a whole she describes a busy life with lots of involvements and hobbies, her story nonetheless has a tough beginning. “I grew up in a very small railroad town,” she begins, “in a very poor part of town, and you don’t come out of that with tons of confidence … We were fairly poor. Six kids, and my father really didn’t have steady employment … I don’t have memories from … when I was home” [i.e., before going to live with her aunt]. Rather than a positive resolution to these early challenges, in other words, this participant describes the negative effects of diminished personal confidence going forward in her life. The highest scorer in this group is in many ways an anomaly compared with other low scorers. She reported having had a very happy childhood and spoke of a life filled with activities and hobbies, with helping others, and with enjoying family and friends. She also told numerous highly detailed stories, often quite humorous ones. However, a key recurring theme throughout the interview was her battle with cancer on three separate occasions, experiences she talked about using words like “fortunate” and “lucky,” terms that suggest not so much narrative agency—at least in the strong sense of taking authorship of how one's life unfolds—as they do an acceptance of circumstances that are ultimately out of our control. “I consider myself very fortunate really,” she says. “I realized how lucky I was to get through it as well as I did … Instead of saying, ‘Why did I have to go through this?’ I just feel very lucky that I had it and got through it three times.” When asked for her thoughts about the future, she says, “I don’t look a whole lot ahead to the future. I kind of try to live one day at a time, try to enjoy myself and be around family as much as I can.” So, while

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this participant seems to be coping with her life-situation with remarkable resilience, her storying style reflects a clear sense that the future is not within her control. Another anomaly in this category is the second-lowest scorer of all. Not only did she report having had a happy childhood, like the woman just discussed, but she recounted some of the richest and lengthiest stories that we heard from any of the participants in our study to date and displayed sophisticated examples of autobiographical reasoning about her life. Nonetheless, there remains a sadness in her tone and a shadow hanging over her for two key reasons. First, at the time of the interview she was awaiting open-heart surgery in the coming few months, an operation she knows it is possible she might not survive. Second, a central plot line running through her story is bound up with her role as caregiver to a daughter with severe mental illness, who more than herself, it almost sounded, was the central character in her narrative: “She basically has been my focus since, we went through fourteen, fifteen years of pure hell … I know I’m talking a lot about her, but it's like we’re joined at the hip … [She] had another relapse and ended up in hospital, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I’ll have to kill myself,’ and then I thought, ‘I can’t kill myself and leave her behind.’” Then toward the end of the interview, with more than a hint of narrative foreclosure discernible in her words, she says, “I don’t see much in the future right now, because I don’t know what my condition's going to be … I’m not my usual peppy, optimistic self; I’m in a waiting stage.” As with the previous participant, then, the larger story she is mindful of and that limits her sense of agency in her life is that our fate, in the end, is beyond our control. Observations and Implications People's life stories—manifest or latent, told or untold— feature all manner of subplots, themes, and chapters, making them challenging to summarize. In one article, we can scarcely do justice to the range of narrative material our participants shared. That said, a few observations are in order on the implications of our research for the practice of narrative care. First, the findings presented here are preliminary only. To date, we have analyzed just twenty of the forty-five interviews in total, and of these twenty, the ones discussed here are the six highest scorers and the seven lowest. As for the seven midrange scorers, they present still more complexities for analysis in terms of how they have storied their lives. As we saw with the last two women discussed from the lowest-scoring group, we find them telling us numerous stories about their lives, each rich in detail and description and reflecting a marked degree of narrative agency, a basically positive narrative tone, and rather sophisticated autobiographical reasoning. Thus, the question has arisen for us as to why it is that people can narrate what seem to be thick, complex stories about their lives and yet score comparatively low on an instrument that is supposedly a reliable measure of resilience. What, we ask, is going on? Is it possible that thin stories can still be resilient stories—or, more accurately, that thinly told stories can have thick stories beneath them, “shadow stories” behind them (de Medeiros and Rubinstein (this issue), stories for which the teller has not yet found the right words—or right listener—to tell? Second, of the twenty participants whose interviews we have looked at so far, it happens that women are the higher

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scorers, while three of the seven lowest scorers are men. In addition to this, the two men in the midrange group are in that range's lower half (i.e., 71–80). As well, and perhaps helping explain why this is so, the men were more likely than the women to speak in statements instead of stories, to engage in CV-talk, and to give us, not extended comments on relationships and feelings, but technical discussions of activities and careers. All of this raises the question as to whether women in general might be inherently more resilient, by having thicker, broader, more open stories about their lives—a question we will clearly keep exploring as our study proceeds. Third, insofar as gender may play a role in late-life resilience, so too may education. Generally speaking, those with higher levels of formal education scored lower on the CDRS. Indeed, when we look at the two lowest scorers of all, one of them, the woman facing open-heart surgery (CDRS = 52), has a master's degree, while the other, the man whose hometown was “a dump” (CDRS = 32), holds a PhD. One theory to explain why resilience seems to be no respecter of learning is that the more educated a person, the less likely he or she is to view life in black-and-white terms and thus to respond to specific statements with “true nearly all the time,” thereby lowering their score overall. To the extent this is a possibility, since the same participants, or some of them at least, also told rich and complex stories, we are prudent to be cautious about concluding that low scores automatically mean low resilience. Put bluntly, while psychometric instruments offer us one measure of a person's resilience, stories recounted in an interview can offer quite another, affording us a fuller picture of that person's strength. Fourth, some of our higher scorers referred to having looked forward very much to telling us about their lives. It is not impossible, then, that they may have inflated their responses on the CDRS so that they would receive a higher score, in the hope of being chosen for the interview, knowing in advance that not all participants would be invited to do so. In short, they may have “performed” resilience in the act of completing the scale itself. However, others may have performed resilience in the interview itself. One midrange scorer, for example, asked at different times throughout her interview for the tape to be stopped so that she could speak more freely about difficult periods in her past. Another would not begin the interview until she had completely finished putting on her makeup. Fifth, as indicated earlier, listeners tend to shape the tales that tellers tell, which is clearly indicated in this passage from a male participant to our young, female research assistant: “I told you the good parts … Don’t think you want to hear all of it.” This raises the question of how much the gender and age of the interviewer has played a role in what the interviewers did and did not share—in this last instance, perhaps because the interviewer was perceived as young and innocent, and thus not able to handle “the whole story.” The listener–teller relationship is certainly, then, a core consideration when referring to the implications of our research for the practice of narrative care. Insofar as there is a correlation between one's level of resilience and the complexity of the story one entertains about one's life, then who is listening for that story—or more importantly, how carefully (de Medeiros and Rubinstein (this issue)) is critical to keep in mind, to say nothing of how the listener is perceived by the teller (Randall et al., 2006) or, for that matter, what is happening in the teller's life when the two are interacting. That said, as we analyze the narrative material our participants have

shared with us, our impression is that regardless of who may be listening, there is more to the story than any one interview, with any one interviewer, can possibly elicit. In analyzing our participants' accounts, we have been struck repeatedly by the disjointed nature of much of what they shared with us, which suggests that what we heard were essentially first rough drafts. If so, then narrative care can play a crucial role in enhancing resilience, as we encourage people to move past their initial formulations of “the story of my life” and give in more fully to the “autobiographical urge” (Cohen, 2005, p. 76), an urge our highest scorers clearly said they felt (e.g., “I could write a book!”). Such opportunities include the sorts of strategies discussed by other contributors to this issue (reminiscence, life review, therapy, etc.) that empower us to delve more extensively into our stories and reflect on them more fully—especially those troubling episodes that resist coherent resolution and yet, by working them through, can enhance our capacity for resilience. Herein lies potential for the exploration of narrative strategies that help us own and honor our own lives, warts and all, as the special sagas they surely are; strategies, in short, that help us tell our stories in ways that make us stronger (see Wingard & Lester, 2001).

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