After reading Chapter 13, you learned about various developmental and sociocultural influences on well-being and resilience. Specifically, some people seem to be able to cultivate resources, both internal and external, that help them to achieve happiness and a sense of purpose in life.
Emma Morano was born in Italy on November 29, 1899, and died on April 15, 2017. At the time of her death she was the world's oldest person at age 117 and the last living person known to be born in the 1800s. Morano held the Guinness World Record titles for oldest living person and oldest living woman after Susannah Mushatt Jones died at age 116 in May 2016.
Morano was the eldest of eight siblings (five sisters and three brothers) and spent most of her life in Verbania, Italy, on the shores of Lake Maggiore. She was married in 1926 to an abusive husband. In 1938, after her first and only child died at 6 months of age, Morano ended her marriage. She told The New York Times that she ended her marriage because “I didn't want to be dominated by anyone.” Moreno credited her longevity to ending her abusive marriage and a diet that included raw eggs and cookies. Longevity also seems to run in Moreno’s family: One of her sisters lived to be 102 and another sister lived to be 99.
Morano worked until age 75 and took pride in paying for whatever she owned. She cooked for herself until she was 112 and did not need live-in caregivers (her nieces) until she was 115. She spent the last 27 years of her life in a sparse two-room apartment. Morano had few possessions, but the ones she had demonstrated what was most important to her. Morano had a close relationship with her sisters. In an interview Morano recalled, “My sisters and I loved to dance and we’d run away to the dance hall and then our mother would come looking for us with a birch stick.” She had photos of her parents and siblings hung on the walls of her apartment. Morano was a devout Catholic who kept rosaries by her bed and religious iconography around her apartment. She also enjoyed the chiming of clocks, so she owned several of them. When an interviewer asked her how she felt at her 117th birthday party, she replied by saying, “I feel well.”
References: Lynch, K. (2017, April 15). World’s oldest person dies aged 117. Retrieved from https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2017/4/worlds-oldest-person-emma-morano-dies-aged-117-469018
Povoledo, E. (2017, April 21). Remembering the World’s Oldest Person in the Objects She Left Behind. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/emma-morano-world-oldest-woman.html?_r=0