Are you an Elder Orphan?

Elder orphans. Ever heard that term before? That was something new to me just the other day when I stumbled across a YouTube video, and she spoke very bluntly, raw, real, and it definitely resonated with me. Yes, I'm 51 years old. I'm not considered an elder yet. However, I feel the message is universal and quite important. She talked about finding people that would check up on you, that would check in on you when they haven't heard from you, as to build a support network. And with that, you'll find out who your true friends and alliances are, and that's not always family. Also to build a binder, an emergency binder, because when something goes sideways, people have no idea what your wishes are. And that includes your will, your power of attorney, living power of attorney, all your funeral arrangements, uh, phone numbers, addresses, you name it. Uh, that's your backup, right? So people are clear and not stressed and traumatized because they don't know what to do, or, um, or they're flailing around. When, you know, it's— I've been there, I've been there with my mom and then again with my dad, but my dad was a definite, uh, different situation. But just the amount of people that had, you know, commented on her video, um, saying that if I disappeared, no one would notice, nobody checks up on me, nobody cares. And that's really sad. Is that really the world that we want to live in? That's certainly not the world I want to co-create. So comment below if you are an elder or you've been in that situation, or maybe you're a pre-elder like myself and you're thinking, yeah, like, who is going to take care of me? And we cannot just be ultra-independent because that is a trauma response. We do need help. Now we want hand-ups, not handouts. Sometimes we do get a handout, but that's temporary. I'm talking about building a circle, a community of people who knows what it's like to be alone, to be solo, to be nomadic.