- Lisa Marcellino and her husband divorced after 34 years of marriage.
- She moved back in with her parents in a different city at 61, and felt lonely.
- Marcellino joined a Facebook group and has rebuilt her social life by making new friends in her 60s.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lisa Marcellino, a 66-year-old nonprofit worker and caregiver based in Louisville, Kentucky. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My husband and I split up in 2019 after 34 years of marriage. It was strange and heartbreaking.
I had a social circle in Cincinnati where we’d lived for 32 years, but many of them didn’t stick around after the divorce. I tried living there on my own, but it got really lonely during COVID.
In 2020, I decided to leave my job and make a change, but I didn’t want to start over somewhere totally new. I kept telling myself, “I’m too old to make new friends. I’m too old to start over. It’s too hard.”
At 61 years old, I moved back in with my parents in Louisville, Kentucky, because they needed help and I had a group of high school friends there. I became my parents' caregiver and I now have a part-time job providing tuition assistance for children at Catholic schools.
My social life suffered after I moved
It was a big change socially. I consider myself a peacock — I like to be out in the middle of the room — but I did not feel that way for the first year and a half after moving. I was in a bit of a funk.
At dinner one night, I told a school friend how hard I was finding being 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 in it.
I started chatting to people in the group about things specific to our stage in life, like dying our hair and how all these extra hairs got on our faces. I read posts from people who were in the same boat as me, who never expected to be taking care of their parents at 65 or older, and who felt disconnected from friends and family.
Someone asked if anyone would like to meet up in a different state to mine, and wondered if I could do the same in Louisville.
I set up a monthly meetup for older women
In March 2022, I asked if anyone wanted to have lunch at a local restaurant. I told everybody I'd be wearing a kimono and everyone else said they'd wear one too, so it became a fun theme.
I was nervous that no one would turn up, because people only committed in Facebook comments to being there.
But six people came. They were all very cordial so we just started talking. We told each other all about ourselves: marriages and divorces and jobs and kids. 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 bring me out of my funk, give me something to look forward to, and make me feel like I was accomplishing something for other people.
The American Association of Retired Persons got involved in December 2023, because they knew loneliness is a big issue for older adults. It started an official Ethel Circle group and taught us to plan and advertise events on Facebook.
Organizing meet-ups gave me purpose
In March 2022, I organized a regional gathering for my Ethel Circle group involving 32 people, some traveling from Iowa and Indianapolis. Now we have a lunch and a dice game meetup every month, and do activities like happy hour, visiting the botanical gardens, Christmas shopping, and pottery painting.
I always tell people who want to come to an event that once they walk in, they're no longer a stranger. We put a little star on their name tag so people know they're new so we can welcome them and make sure they're not alone.
Sometimes we're a little crazy and we're always loud, with everyone talking at the same time, but I almost always get notes from new people saying it was so fun.
The Ethel group has definitely added to my life. I needed to feel needed. It's given me purpose and something to look forward to, and it's given me girlfriends to vent and relate to.
I've learned that your real friends will embrace you, warts and all, and you can't control what other people think of you.
You're never too old to make new friends. I never envisioned the closeness of friends that I have now, so don't be afraid to stick your neck out and walk into a room where you don't know anybody.
There is a lot of life after 60 — you don't want to miss it.