60 years older than ever after moving the cities when the husband left

• Lisa Marcellino and her husband divorced after 34 years of marriage.
• She returned with her parents to another city at 61 and felt alone.
• Marcellino joined a Facebook group and has rebuilt his social life by making new friends in sixties.

This also filed test is based on a conversation with Lisa Marcellino, a 66 -year -old non -profit worker based in Louisville, Kentucky. It was published for duration and clarity.

My husband and I separated in 2019 after 34 years of marriage. It was strange and heartbreaking.

I had a social circle in Cincinnati where we lived for 32 years, but many of them did not stay after divorce. I tried to live there, but it became really lonely during Covid.

In 2020, I decided to leave my job and make a change, but I did not want to start again in a completely new place. I kept saying to myself: “I’m too old to make new friends. I’m too old to start again. It’s too difficult.”

At 61, I returned with my parents to Louisville, Kentucky because they needed help and I had a group of high school friends there. I became the caregiver of my parents and I now have part -time jobs providing support for tuition fees to children in Catholic schools.

My social life suffered after moving

It was a great socially change. I consider myself a peacock – I like to be in the middle of the room – but I did not feel in this way for the first and a half year after having moved. I was a bit of a funk.

At dinner one evening, I told a friend of the school how hard I found it at home all the time with such a limited social life. She told me about a Facebook group called The Ethel Circle, which had a few thousand older women like me.

I started to discuss with people from the group specific things to our life scene, like dying hair and how all this additional hair survived our faces. I read items of people who were in the same boat as me, who did not expect to take care of their parents at 65 or over, and who felt disconnected from friends and family.

Someone asked if someone wanted to meet in a different state from mine and wondered if I could do the same in Louisville.

I set up a monthly meeting for elderly women

In March 2022, I asked if someone wanted to lunch in a local restaurant. I told everyone that I would wear a kimono and that everyone said they would wear one too, so it has become a fun theme.

I was nervous that nobody presents themselves, because people only committed themselves in Facebook’s comments to be there.

But six people came. They were all very cordial, so we just started talking. We all said to ourselves: weddings and divorces and jobs and children. The next thing we knew, we had been there for two and a half hours.

We decided to do it again every month. I knew that organizing it would make me get me out of my funk, would give me something to hope and make me feel that I was doing something for others.

THE American Association of Retirees I got involved in December 2023 because they knew that loneliness is a big problem for the elderly. He launched an official group from Ethel Circle and taught us to plan and announce events on Facebook.

Organize the meetings gave me a goal

In March 2022, I organized a regional rally for my Ethel Circle group involving 32 people, some traveling from Iowa and Indianapolis. Now we have a lunch and a dice game meeting every month, and do activities like the Happy Hour, visiting botanical gardens, Christmas shopping and pottery painting.

I always say to people who want to come to an event that, once they enter, they are no longer a stranger. We put a little star on their label so that people know that they are new so that we can welcome them and make sure that they are not alone.

Sometimes we are a little crazy and we are always noisy, with everyone speaking at the same time, but I almost always receive notes of new people saying that it was so fun.

The Ethel group has definitely added to my life. I needed to feel necessary. It gave me a goal and something to hope, and he gave me friends to let off steam and identify myself.

I learned that your real friends will kiss you, warts and everything, and you cannot control what others think of you.

You are never too old to make new friends. I have never imagined the proximity of the friends I have now, so don’t be afraid to stick to you and walk in a room where you don’t know anyone.

There is a lot of life after 60 years – you don’t want to miss it.