Restorying ageing: Amplifying older women’s voices through creative life writing

There is a growing body of interdisciplinary literature on the cultural representation of ageing and its impact on older women’s lived experiences; however, there is a lack of research exploring how older women engage in restorying these representations through creative life writing. In doing so, this article contributes to life-writing studies, age studies, and social gerontology. It draws on focus group discussions, follow-up interviews, and creative writing outputs generated during a project conducted in collaboration with the Irish NGO Age and Opportunity, involving seven women aged between 50 and 80. It discusses the thematic findings, interpreted with reference to literature on ageing, gender, and life writing. The analysis identifies four primary themes: age as a construct; visibility, invisibility, and representation; agency, freedom, and self-authorship; and body, sexuality, and the Irish context. It highlights how nontraditional forms of life writing, such as letters, short reflections, and poems, are particularly well suited to challenging dominant narratives of ageing as decline, and demonstrates the transformative potential of restorying as both research method and lived practice. The findings also point to the significance of specifically Irish cultural and historical legacies as a force in older women’s experiences of ageing.