Picking Up the Pieces, the HIV support group at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, BC started to meet weekly in 1989.    At the beginning of the 1980s, the AIDS crisis had an uncertain future but few would have anticipated that the emerging issue twenty years on would be HIV and aging.  

By 2000, "Picking Up the Pieces" had become an interesting group, according to one of its facilitators, Mary Petty. It was a mix of long-term survivors who had toughed out the hard years, and men who had been newly diagnosed but were part of the post-protease inhibitor and relatively de-politicized context that surrounded the disease. 

Many of those newly diagnosed, who joined after 2000, are between the ages of 50 and 70, says Petty.  They bring with them a new sensibility.  They are not fighting against a homophobic society and an indifferent medical system, as were the early members of the group.  The older members who were diagnosed after 2000 bring with them a sense of shame about becoming infected at a point in their lives when "they should have known better." 

But in the Thursday morning group, there is a place to talk about that shame.  There is space to revisit the early years as well, to lament the deaths of friends, to revisit the fight that brought people together in a community that cares for and treats people living with HIV and AIDS.  "Picking Up the Pieces" is a place where those newly diagnosed and those who have lived with the disease for many years can get support for the difficulties that living with HIV presents.

Picking Up the Pieces, the HIV support group at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, BC started to meet weekly in 1989.    At the beginning of the 1980s, the AIDS crisis had an uncertain future but few would have anticipated that the emerging issue twenty years on would be HIV and aging.  

By 2000, "Picking Up the Pieces" had become an interesting group, according to one of its facilitators, Mary Petty. It was a mix of long-term survivors who had toughed out the hard years, and men who had been newly diagnosed but were part of the post-protease inhibitor and relatively de-politicized context that surrounded the disease. 

Many of those newly diagnosed, who joined after 2000, are between the ages of 50 and 70, says Petty.  They bring with them a new sensibility.  They are not fighting against a homophobic society and an indifferent medical system, as were the early members of the group.  The older members who were diagnosed after 2000 bring with them a sense of shame about becoming infected at a point in their lives when "they should have known better." 

But in the Thursday morning group, there is a place to talk about that shame.  There is space to revisit the early years as well, to lament the deaths of friends, to revisit the fight that brought people together in a community that cares for and treats people living with HIV and AIDS.  "Picking Up the Pieces" is a place where those newly diagnosed and those who have lived with the disease for many years can get support for the difficulties that living with HIV presents.