Creating an Aging Group: the ARCH Group Model

For the past three years, New York Yearly Meeting’s ARCH Program has offered coordinator-led aging groups such as Aging Without Children, Seasons of Life 60–80 and 80+, and Caregivers. These ongoing monthly groups have become places where Friends can come together to share, listen, and connect around something we are all doing: aging.

These groups are not meant to replace the pastoral care happening within our Meetings. They are not classes or trainings with an expert at the front of the room, or committee meetings focused on solving. Instead, they offer a place for Friends to reflect together on the changes that come with aging and to hear how those changes are unfolding in the lives of others.

The group model works. When we make space to talk openly about aging, we begin to normalize it. We discover that we are not alone in what we are experiencing. We hear perspectives we might not otherwise encounter. And we build relationships that can become sources of wisdom, companionship, and practical support that may very well sustain us through both ordinary changes and times of crisis.

Each person is an expert on their own experience. Each person is an expert on their own experience

ARCH Aging Groups are based on a peer-to-peer support model. This means that each of us is an expert on our own lives and our own experience of aging.

Some aging Friends may also be social workers, pastors, nurses, gerontologists, or other professionals. That knowledge can be valuable, but it is not what makes someone an expert in an Aging Group. Each of us brings wisdom from our own life and from the particular ways we have experienced change, loss, growth, uncertainty, and possibility as we age.

We cannot know when our experience might be helpful to someone else, or when someone else’s experience might change how we understand our own, unless we intentionally make space to gather and share our experiences of aging.

This is what makes an Aging Group different from a class or a traditional one-way helping relationship. There is mutuality in the group model. We come together as people who are all aging. We listen to one another and learn from one another, and move between giving and receiving support. The wisdom in the group emerges from the lives and experiences of the people who are there.

By creating spaces where Friends can speak openly about aging and listen deeply to one another, we begin to shift the culture around aging – from something we tend to experience privately and quietly to something we can talk about, learn about from one another, and practice together.

Creating your own Aging Group

One of the most encouraging things we have learned from ARCH’s aging groups is how easily this model can be replicated. An Aging Group can happen in a Monthly Meeting, Quarterly Meeting, worship group, or other community. It can meet on Zoom or in person.

To begin:

1. Listen. What is rising in your community? Are several people experiencing something similar as they age? Is there something in your own life that you sense others may be experiencing, too, and that could use deeper attention?
2. Choose a topic.This becomes the focus of your Aging Group. The topic can be broad or very specific: living alone, caregiving, menopause, retirement, changing friendships, becoming a grandparent, navigating changes in our bodies, or any other experience of aging.
3. Find a convenor. The convenor creates and holds the container for the group. No special expertise is required. Ideally, the convenor is someone who shares the experience or concern being explored.
4. Set aside an hour. An Aging Group can meet for an hour, either in person or on Zoom. You can meet once or decide to continue meeting regularly.
5. Open with silence. The convenor reminds everyone of the topic and invites a period of silence. This gives people a chance to settle and turn their attention toward their personal experience of the topic.
6. Begin with check-ins. Invite each person to say their name, age, and a check-in to share what has been present in their life around the topic. Encourage people to speak from their own lived experience rather than generalities.
7. Listen without responding. During the first round, the group simply listens to each person. We do not respond to, interpret, or try to fix what someone else has shared.
8. Notice what is emerging. Once everyone has had a chance to speak, the convenor might name some of the themes or questions they heard. There is no need to summarize everything.
9. Let the conversation unfold. Now the group can move into a more open conversation. Participants can ask questions, respond to one another, and explore the themes that have emerged.

Now the group can move into a more open conversation. Participants can ask questions, respond to one another, and explore the themes that have emerged.

10. Trust the wisdom of the group. This is where something surprising often happens. Similarities in experience are recognized and differences become clearer. New perspectives emerge. Someone’s experience may give another person language for something they have been experiencing. Someone may know of practical resources for an issue held by another. Connections deepen. This is where something surprising often happens. Similarities in experience are recognized and differences become clearer. New perspectives emerge. Someone’s experience may give another person language for something they have been experiencing. Someone may know of practical resources for an issue held by another. Connections deepen.
11. Decide whether to meet again. If the group has been helpful, choose a time to gather again. The topic may remain the same for several meetings, or the group may discover a new question to explore together.

What can happen in an Aging Group?

The results of this simple format can be surprisingly rich. An Aging Group can:

• Create community around the aging experience, which can often feel isolating.
• Allow us to move between roles. We may sometimes need support and at other times have wisdom or support to offer.
• Bring forward wisdom that might not otherwise be shared – and allow us to gain wisdom from our Friends’ experiences.
• Prepare us for change or crisis by helping us build caring relationships before we need them.
• Help us normalize growing older and confront ageism, including the assumptions we may carry about our own aging and the aging of others.

An Aging Group gives us a chance with our spiritual community to practice something that can be easy to forget: We are not aging alone, we are aging together.