It’s Sunday afternoon and Nancy Miller-Green, 83, is knocking on doors to remind neighbors about the weekly dinner at her house. She’s spent the afternoon preparing a shrimp and corn chowder, which she’ll serve with some red wine. Rapping on Maria Pugliese’s door, she’s surprised when it cracks open. “Are you coming tonight, Maria?” Miller-Green asks after pressing inside. “We all want to see you.” Pugliese, 51, says she’ll try her best, and Miller-Green continues her rounds in the cul-de-sac.
The guests arrive as the afternoon light dims on this Asheville, North Carolina, community. Eight neighbors, including Pugliese, sit around the coffee table sipping wine and nibbling on cheese cubes and fish dip, a black cat named Aura circling their ankles. Some are former social workers or therapists who have spent their professional lives caring for other people. All are over 50 years old, and the oldest is in her 90s. Half are lesbians. Most don’t have children.
They tease each other as close friends do about one’s dark sense of humor and another’s taste in wine. But the conversation inevitably veers to the honest realities of aging. Married couple Va Boyle, 91, and Jean Cassidy, 79, say they are missing friends, those who recently have died and those who have moved to retirement communities that offer more care. Aging, Cassidy says, is about “learning to lose.”
The group — which the neighbors call a pod and numbers about 10 — often discusses their older years at the weekly dinners that started in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which devastated the Asheville area in September 2024.
Even though most members of the pod don’t require a regular caregiver, they’ve hired a “sharegiver” to help out about five hours a week with tasks such as sewing a button, doing yard work and running errands. The hope is that the sharegiver can deliver increasingly more care as they need it.
For More go to https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/22/health/aging-in-place-wellness
