Thinking Ahead: Women’s Group becomes Lifelong anchor

Dolores Dewbury never thought of herself as a volunteer.

When she started up the Lifelong Women’s Group, she was motivated by the loneliness she felt after losing her wife, Mary Blake, who was her life partner of 30 years.

“My wife died back in 2018, and about six months after she died, I started going to Lifelong,” Dewbury said. “Lifelong saved my life. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.”

After the pandemic, Dewbury, who will be 81 in August, was talking to her therapist about a woman’s group she had been a part of in the ‘80s when she was living in the Adirondacks.

“I was talking to her one day and said, ‘you know, I have this idea, and I did it once before, and I’d like to start a group,” Dewbury said. “All I knew is I was alone, and I needed human contact, but needed a reason to find human contact.”

Shortly thereafter, the Lifelong Women’s Group was born.

It started in May 2022 with just six women meeting once a week at Lifelong to talk about whatever was on their minds. Since then, the popular social group has grown to have more than 60 members on its email list.

Recently, Lifelong honored Dewbury with the Barbara J. Hulbert Volunteer Award, which is given annually by the Lifelong Board of Directors to a Lifelong member who demonstrates exceptional leadership and service to Lifelong.

The Women’s Group meets every Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Not all of the members show up every week (the average attendance is around 20), but there is always a good enough turnout to have a robust and lively discussion. More people show up in the winter than in the summer, Dewbury said, but on a recent July afternoon about a dozen people attended the meeting.

“I was doing everything on the fly,” Dewbury said of the early days of the group. “I didn’t have a plan in mind.”

She realized the group needed a bit of structure to help get the discussion off the ground, so she implemented a “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” a theme to kick off every meeting. People with something to share group it into one of the three categories.  

“It just warms people up. Things are sometimes good, bad sometimes, and there is definitely always an ugly,” Dewbury said with a laugh.

After that, Dewbury will ask the group a question to spark conversation. At a recent meeting, the question was “what is a gift you have gotten that you absolutely loved.”

Answers included offers of reconciliation from estranged family members, relatives’ diaries, and an old windup toy, passed down through the generations.

Politics — always a hot topic among the group — is limited to just one half-hour of discussion time.

“We want to leave these meetings feeling good,” Dewbury said. “Having only that short time [of talking about politics] doesn’t have the same effect as when you spend an hour and a half on it.”

The participants raised their hands to speak — taking turns was something that the group had to work on at first, and in the beginning Dewbury had the women pass each other a stuffed elephant to indicate whose turn it was to speak (whoever had the elephant had the floor). Years later, the group has gotten into a rhythm and does just fine without it.

The age of the members ranges from late 50s to late 80s, “but we’re all getting up there in age, and we all have similar problems,” Dewbury said. Many of the women joined when they relocated to the area to be closer to their adult children, she said.

There is value to meeting as just women with no men around, the women agreed at a meeting July 10.

“I’ve noticed women talk differently when men are present,” said Pamela Mading. “There are things they will not talk about. I think it makes a good deal of difference; when I was young and married, at cocktail parties all the women would be in the kitchen and all the men in the living room.”

One of the other group members chimed in that this is because men do not like to talk the way women do.

“They were just kind of bragging,” Mading agreed about the men, with a laugh. “If there were men here, I probably wouldn’t come.”

Amy Schauss, of Enfield, has been a member of the group since it first started. “I fell in love with the group,” she said. “It’s such an important facet in my life. Since I don’t work anymore, I don’t meet a lot of people, so this group provides me with that, being introduced to other people.”

Dewbury said that she would encourage all older people who are looking to meet new friends and expand their horizons to explore the list of clubs and activities that Lifelong has to offer. Even if the Women’s Group is not the right fit, there are many opportunities to try something new.

Lifelong stands apart as an exceptional senior center, said Dewbury. “I tell people this one is unique,” she said, “and the staff is awesome, and I just love it there. You walk in, and you feel at home, and that’s gold to me.”

For more information about Lifelong, visit TCLifelong.org.