“While I was caring for my mom, we would go to medical appointments and see so many individuals sitting alone and waiting for hours. I could see their depression, the isolation they were in. Fortunately, I was able to help my mother maneuver through this situation, but it wasn’t easy. My mom had dementia and chronic illness and by the time she really started needing my help, my daughter was only 2-years-old. I couldn’t keep asking friends for help, so I had to bring my daughter to all of the appointments.

There are so many people in this sandwich generation taking care of their parents and their children or grandchildren. You also have a lot of individuals that don’t have family or friends that live close to them anymore, and there isn’t a whole lot of community support for them either.

We’re told in our culture that we need to be independent, we need to pull ourselves up from the bootstraps, and if you ask for help, you’re weak. This is made all the worse if you’re asking for help because you are older, which stops a lot of aging individuals from seeking support.

Older adults are so important to our society. They help with keeping a lot of traditional skills present like knitting, or woodworking, or cooking. These things are critical in retaining our culture in this digital era, and I think we’re close to losing it if we don’t provide more support to folks who are aging. Two decades from now, we could be in a really sad place where nobody has support if we don’t build a system that serves everyone.

At Home by High is one solution to creating a better system. We have weekly community meet-ups. We play bingo, go on walks, and we provide different little things that can help someone remain in their home like lawn care, accompanying them to appointments, and grocery shopping, all of which are done with the help of our volunteers. And our volunteers love doing it. Those intergenerational connections are so vital to the health and well-being of our community.

We know that the more diverse a community is in age, income level, and background, the healthier it is overall because we all utilize community services at some point or another, whether we ever plan to or not.

And, I have to say, if my mom and I had a support network where I could have brought her to something like this once a week, it would have changed her attitude and acceptance of growing older. Maybe, she would have even lived longer because of it.”

– Katie Beaumont is the Founder and Executive Director of At Home by High, an organization that provides support, connectedness, and enables independence for adults ages 50+.