Introduction

Previous chapters showed how participants lived with ongoing uncertainty, how activities ceased to be possible or accessible, and ways in which they could experience disablism in being excluded from opportunities for engagement or confined to home by environmental barriers. I argued that efforts to cope with disablement processes (both at the level of the body and in broader contexts) amounted to attempts to maintain a sense of value and meaning in life, something constructed in interaction with broader societal discourses of ageing and of able-bodiedness. The focus of this chapter is on responses to the changes involved. I discuss findings relative to the third research question: ‘How do older disabled people respond to the challenges involved in disablement processes?’ As I do throughout this book, I use the term ‘older disabled people’ here to include both participant groups – people ageing with disability (AwithD group) and people first experiencing disability with ageing (DwithA group).

In this chapter, by way of background, I first return to the issue of meaning, raised already in Chapter 3, and address what is understood by ‘meaning in life’. I then discuss how loss of intimates is intertwined with experiences of disablement. In combination, these, I suggest, amount to threats to perceptions of life as meaningful. In the main part of this chapter, I discuss how, in response, participants tried to reinterpret and remake their lives to perceive them as meaningful. They did this by investing everyday activities with new meaning and by continuing to maintain activities, participation and connections, sometimes achieving this with the help of community organising and public responses, including care centres. This could involve new opportunities for connection and self-realisation. Participants identified with goals of self-development, activity and social connectedness more typically associated with the ‘third age’. This process is essentially a meaning-making one, as there is an intrinsic connection between selfrealisation and a search for meaning.

Theoretical context: meaning in life

First, what is understood by ‘meaning’? ‘Meaning’ is a way to make sense of one's existence (Stillman et al, 2009). Perceiving that one is living a meaningful life is associated with a range of positive outcomes like satisfaction with life, happiness, physical health, well-being or living longer (Krause, 2004, 2009; Stillman et al, 2009; Shao et al, 2014). Indeed, happiness may be impossible if life is perceived as meaningless (Baumeister, 1991; Derkx, 2013).