Please don't call me 'dear': older women's narratives of health care.

This paper foregrounds some of the central themes that a group of older women in writing workshops identified as integral to their health and overall quality of life. In particular it looks at how these women felt about their relationship to professional health care providers, and the role that both play in the maintenance of the women's health and well-being. The research that it is based on comes from narratives and autobiographical stories written by these women, which aimed both to identify the issues and concerns that affect them as older women, and to position them centrally as agents and collaborators in intellectual work. Their challenging words disrupted conventional story lines about the experiences of growing older, and confronted the narrow range of negative images of ageing and the accompanying stereotypes that currently pervade our culture.