“Take good care of yourself” An integrative review of older widows’ self-care for health and well-being

ABSTRACT

Take good care of yourself is a regard often said to older bereaved women. However, what does it mean? Though self-care is a well-known phenomenon within health, it is not well understood in the context of late life spousal bereavement and widowhood. We undertook an integrative review to synthesize knowledge of older women’s self-care challenges, resources and activities when bereaved and in a healthy transition to widowhood. Good care refers to health-promoting self-care and can be explained as the older widows’ ability to access and mobilize resources and activities that are significant for a healthy transition to widowhood.

KEYWORDS:

• Bereavement
• health
• integrative review
• older widow
• self-care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.