Proactive Aging “Circle of Caring”
By Cynthia Trenshaw

Editor's note: The author is certified by the State of Washington as a Professional Guardian for elders and a registered nursing assistant. She is nationally certified as a hospital chaplain and a massage therapist. For several years she was chaplain of a 200-bed nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later became a teaching practitioner at the Care Through Touch Institute in San Francisco, serving homeless people on the streets, under the viaducts, and in the shelters of the Bay Area. She earned her master's degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1998 just before she turned 56. Her master's thesis focused on Circle as a spiritual practice. She lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound and is a teaching colleague of PeerSpirit, Inc., specializing in issues of aging.

There is a “look” that comes over them, especially people of a certain age, when I speak of our Circle of Caring. The look says, “Oh, how I long for that,” and “Is it really possible?” and “How can I have that too?”

As we age, one of our greatest fears is that of isolation and invisibility; our hunger for intimate community is palpable. That “look” says “I don't want to be alone” and “Does anyone else ponder aging as I do?” and “I want to share my wisdom and my concerns and my joys and grief.”

For over three years 18 men and women of Circle of Caring have been meeting twice a month to consider issues of aging. That “look” has come over so many other faces in our area that four more similar circles have begun.

Recently a reporter for the Seattle Times interviewed our proactive aging circle (see article), and asked us, “How did you develop such intimacy in so large a group?” And although each of us considered her question carefully, and waited for our answers to emerge, basically the consensus was: we follow a few basic ground rules, we respect each others' experiences, and we are continually curious about each other. We're also curious about ourselves, and what we may be inspired to say in an atmosphere of acceptance. So, one by one, we're willing to risk saying the deeper things that are on our hearts, knowing that the others will honor what we say and will hold our risking in the container of respect and safety that is our Circle of Caring.

The curiosity, the respect, even the risking, are attributes that each of our 18 members brings with him or herself. But the ground rules are set by the group as a whole. The ground rules are what allow the Circle to take on a life of its own, beyond the individual lives that comprise it. It is the ground rules that allow us to relax into the circle, allow us to ponder and risk and laugh and cry and slowly learn to love each other.

Over the years we have considered the practical: writing our advance directives and values declarations, taking courses in the fundamentals of caregiving, discussing the fine points of medical advocacy. We have delved into the esoteric: what do we fear, what have been our experiences of grace, what do we believe happens after death, what do we value, what is this life about anyway? And we have fun: throwing pot luck dinners, creating art projects, going to the movies, sometimes deliberately creating “unlikely combinations” of three or four of us who would not ordinarily find ourselves together for a social outing.

Our conversations about important and difficult things (and even the social time with members we know less well) put our discomforts and fears and wonderings out in the open, to be shared and carried in the sacred space of our virtual community. Like the Circle ground rules, this sharing binds us together. Whether or not we ever live together in a bricks-and-mortar community, we are learning to BE together in the ways that matter to us most. If some day something more tangible should develop out of this Circle work, we will already have become a living community along the way.
 

	The basic ground rules for Circle of Caring were devised by Christina Baldwin in her book Calling the Circle. More recently PeerSpirit Inc. has published a booklet about our Circle of Caring experience and its adaptations of Baldwin's work, entitled A Harvest of Years: A PeerSpirit Guide for Proactive Aging Circles. Both Harvest of Years and Calling the Circle are available at PeerSpirit.com.