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I’ve been watching videos of a single, older white woman living on a narrowboat, cruising the canals and rivers of the United Kingdom. I’m drawn to this content for two reasons: curiosity about the lived experiences of others, and because, as someone determined to make choices my ancestors and elders were denied, I’m planning my own “woman of a certain age” solo adventure.
I’m choosing to age in a place where growing older isn’t treated like a looming crisis.
As I watched her move through her life, I found myself wondering how she sustains it financially. What allows someone to live with so little visible income, yet so much ease? And then it hit me because it’s one of the reasons I’m leaving the United States.
She can build a life around covering her basic needs because we don’t share the same concern of aging without care. She doesn’t have to accumulate and guard savings against the constant threat of injury, hospitalization, or long-term care.
She doesn’t have to calculate every risk against financial ruin.
She gets to experience aging as freedom rather than countdown.
She can trust that if she falls, gets sick, or needs help, care exists.
In the U.S., aging is framed as a personal failure. Security in later life is treated as individual achievement rather than collective commitment. If you can’t afford care, it’s assumed you didn’t plan or save enough and this fear is normalized.
It’s in these moments, watching someone else live inside a different social contract, that I’m reminded why I do this work.
Because I, too, want to age with dignity and the freedom to feed my curiosity rather than manage my fear. And because dignity in aging should never be a privilege of geography, race, or wealth, but a guarantee of our shared humanity.
#LifeBeyondTheSupremacyMyth #MythOfWhiteSupremacy #ProfitWithoutOppression #KimCrayton
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