Senior Mentoring
We live in a youth-oriented culture, and older individuals are often overlooked. However there is a societal shift that looks positively to life after sixty as a period of continued growth, productivity, and enjoyment. Our challenge is to pursue and embrace the second half of life with curiosity, challenge, and fulfilling activity.
Aging involves predictable developmental transitions. Society magnifies the challenges of aging and associates aging with problems. A more balanced view sees these challenges as predictable, normal transitions. Despite the stereotype of seniors living for years in institutions, most live independently much of their lives with family members providing some assistance.
“Quality of life” is typically defined as a person’s health and the ability to perform daily activities. However, the narrative of our life explains much more about the quality of our life. It is a powerful testimony of who we are. Mentoring through storytelling connects us to people in the present as well as to people in our past. We have a sense of well being and belonging when others know who we are by the stories we tell.
What are your beliefs about the transitions in life after age sixty? In your community are seniors respected or avoided? Some cultures and communities value seniors, age, and wisdom while others avoid and ignore those in their second half of life and its transitions. Just as laying good foundations is important in the early years of one’s life, continuing to grow and embrace life is essential to finishing a life well-lived.
Mentoring provides an opportunity for those engaged in life after sixty to support one another through the natural and predictable stages of senior living. These twelve conversations stimulate discussions of life review and self esteem that help seniors live better and purposefully in the present. By engaging in peer mentoring seniors experience a sense of life integrity and greater satisfaction with their lives. Seniors also provide encouragement to one another for success in the developmental tasks of the second half of life. Through the 12 Conversations program, younger and older seniors become a valuable resource of wisdom and support for one another.
It is not the intent of this program to have a hierarchy of mentoring from a “more experienced” mentor to a “lesser experienced” mentee. Seniors experience various life changes and events at differing times and with differing sequences. One senior already may have life experience with which the other senior has little experience. At other times they may both be equally experienced and may simply share and enjoy their journey and stories together. The mentoring relationship is more like hiking where one person at times may be in the lead and at other times both may be walking side-by-side.
Our lives are shaped by our relationships with others. Peer mentoring provides another opportunity to be shaped by conversational friendship. Listening to someone share the story of his or her life and telling our story enhances the quality of life of both individuals. We remember with integrity, pride, and humility our life, our loved ones, our blessings, and our continuing journey of becoming who we are.
See the order page for these conversation guides. I hope you will enjoy wisdom and new friendships through Senior-to-Senior Mentoring: 12 Conversations for Active Living!
Copies are $12.00 plus shipping and handling.
