Abstract
Homeless families with children, often called the “new homeless”, will soon be overtaken by a large population of middle-aged baby boomers. Within this age wave will be homeless middle-aged women who must work in order to obtain housing and a financially sound future. Securing employment is critical because middle-aged women often fall outside governmental financial, healthcare, and social service safety nets that serve homeless women with children, people with disabilities, or those over the age of 65. Resilience is recognized as an important factor in the ability of both aging and homeless individuals to cope and persevere. Job skill training program providers to homeless individuals must be able to recognize and encourage resilience in middle-aged women in order to help them successfully compete for and acquire employment. In anticipation of the growing problem of homelessness among middle-aged women, this study sought to learn the characteristics of resilience in a group of middle-aged homeless women who participated in and completed an employment skills training program. Sources of Data: Using a grounded theory approach, 25 biographies of women between the ages of 45 and 65 were examined for themes of resilience in relation to a fundamental set of resilience characteristics identified in a study of successfully aging older adults. These characteristics, known as the Resilience Core (Wagnild, 2010) consist of A purposeful life, Perseverance, Equanimity, Self-Reliance, and Existential Aloneness. The biographies were written at the conclusion of an employment skills training program offered by a nonprofit agency whose mission is to help homeless women acquire the skill set necessary to obtain employment and so acquire and maintain housing. Conclusions Reached: The data reflected that the middle-aged homeless women shared characteristics of resilience with successfully aging older adults. Themes of resilience arose most frequently in correlation with the Resilience Core (Wagnild, 2010) elements of A Purposeful Life, the realization that life has purpose and the valuation of one’s contributions, and Equanimity, a balanced perspective of one’s life and experiences. Themes of Perseverance and Self-reliance arose less frequently, and themes of Existential aloneness, relating to realizing the uniqueness of one’s life path, even less. Themes of hardiness, an important component of resilience were also reflected in the data. Although outside of the Resilience Core construct, the concept of hardiness describes the overarching theme of the biographies, reflecting characteristics of control, commitment, and challenge.