| Summary: | As a person ages and accumulates life experience, the person becomes a unique occupational being. While people develop their own life styles, repeating and recreating life continuity while meeting life’s events, their personalities and strategies tend to become strong, sometimes rigid. The presentation, “Two old women”, is titled after an Alaskan legend of Inuit women (Wallis, 1993) who experienced a life crisis after being left by their tribe in a severe winter and instead of accepting death, they decided to survive. They chased rabbits, collected twigs and endured coldness and fatigue. Finally, the two old women returned to their tribe with new resilience and with a different social position than before. This presentation is about two old women living in contemporary Japanese society who suffered from life crisis brought on by health problems. We study their life experience to investigate the occupation of resolving life crises in old age. The data used in this research was originally collected for two different studies regarding elderly person‚s occupation. Our methods were open-ended interview and participant observation. One woman, Yuki, was anxious about her future when she recognized her memory problems. She feared causing a stove fire at home and decided to move into an apartment with care service. In the new place, Yuki developed social relationships, but maintained close relationship with her family living separately. She continued enjoying hanging around with her old friends, who shared her life meanings in their old age. The other woman, Hana, because of a stroke, gave up her life and close relationships with her loved ones. Occupational therapy intervention guided her to engagement in occupations meaningful to her and her social experience. Hana recreated a new life and recovered relationships with her family and people around her. Yuki and Hana each resolved a life crisis in old age and went on to live a „meaningful existence„ (Jackson, 1996, p.339). Engaging in familiar occupations, they have recaptured disappearing or lost life continuity. In this presentation, showing similarities and difference between the two women, we analyze the occupation of resolving life crises in old age, from phenomenological perspectives.
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