Rainbow Lounge: LGBTQ Aging Well Peer Support Group (Hudson, NY)

MISSION & TOPICS: LGBTQ+ people 40 & up meet twice monthly (1st & 3rd Wednesdays) to share food & provide peer support to one another for negotiating the inevitable changes/challenges in the following areas associated with aging well:

• Relationships (family, chose family, friends, lovers)
• Health (changes in stamina, dealing with loss of muscle mass, increase in belly fat, slowing of metabolism, chronic pain, chronic illness, loss of hearing & sight, etc)
• Housing (being able to afford to stay in your house & keep up with the maintenance, mobility in your house, downsizing, etc)
• Grieving the loss/change of relationships, phyiscal & mental stamina, health, resources, sexuality, & autonomy
• Financial Resources & Risks (how can you plan for your most important financial risks on a fixed income, manage to find affordable health insurance that effectively manages healthcare financial risks, and manage to create abundance)
• Work/Purpose (record numbers of queer elders are forestalling retirement & continuing to work or consult and others find transitioning to retirement and service challenging because their work so defined their identity; other’s are having to work multiple part-time jobs just to make ends meet)
• Spirituality/Mindfulness (many queer men have the time & motivation to inquire about spirituality/mindfulness/is this all there is questions, but find traditional Christianity, Islam, and other mainstream religions not very welcoming or relevant to their lives)
• Play/Creativity: changes in what brings you fun and builds your creativity and being willing to try new things with new people and in new settings.

SHARED VALUES: This peer support group agrees to practice the following shared values together to create a safe & empowering container for all of us to learn and grow in:

1) Being Vulnerable: practice sharing our true thoughts, feelings, and even conflicting thoughts & feelings
2) Asking for Help: being willing to be part of a team and to ask for help and to provide help if our experience might benefit another group member
3) Sharing only our own experience & not giving advice: sharing only our own experience (I statements), and not giving anyone advice, knowing our experience, capacity, and resources are always different from others
4) Confidentiality: not sharing anything that is said in the group in a way that could be identified with a particular person
5) Listening with curiosity & empathy: we endeavor to keep an open mind and heart when listening to others and strive to wish them nothing but the best
6) Building & being part of a team: we will practice attending to our own needs & visions, AND the needs, capacities, challenges, and resources of our team. We will cultivate being part of a group that is smarter and better resourced than any of its individual members.
7) Focus on our strengths, hope, capacity & resources: we will avoid or minimize predicting failure, focusing only on our weaknesses and lack of capacity or resources, and instead focus on our strengths, hope, capacity, & resources. We will be open to solutions and resources & capacities that develop through teamwork.

C0-FACILITATORS of the Organizational Gatherings of the Queer Men’s Aging Well Peer Support Group

• David Pais, co-lead a group for 5 years for people recently diagnosed with HIV in Chelsea from 1994-1999. He left to earn an MA in counseling from Loyola -Chicago and did a practicum year at the LGBT Center for people who were just coming out.
• Bart Church, Q-MoB Interim Executive Director has been organizing queer educational and peer support groups for more than 25 years and helping his 86 year old parents negotiate their aging well process, as well as the aging well process of his many queer friends who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.