Opting out while fitting in: How residents make sense of assisted living and cope with community life

Abstract This paper explores how assisted living residents construct personal understandings of congregate settings through the stories they tell. Using the narratives of Dorothy and Estelle, two 91-year-old participants, we examine how linkages between past experiences and present conditions enable residents to make sense of assisted living and cope with membership in a community comprised of diverse interests, backgrounds, and impairments. Our narrative analysis focuses on how individuals strive for continuity or new meaning in the face of chaos or disruption. Both participants characterize life in the facility in terms of prior personal and professional experiences that then inform their current behavior and feelings toward fellow residents. Although they profess to have little in common with these residents, both constitute assisted living in ways that enable them to enjoy their lives within the facility. Implications for studies using narrative analysis to examine transition into and satisfaction with congregate living are examined.