Hello, friends!
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like a weirdo. From kindergarten through grad school, I felt like the other students seemed to have a better grasp on what they were supposed to be doing while I was just faking it. That feeling of being the only one who wasn’t connected continued throughout most of my activities and into my career as I got older. It often made me feel lonely—but there’s a really good chance that you’ve had a similar experience.
In his powerful and thought-provoking book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy explores how lonely most people feel, at least some of the time. Most of us think we are the only person to ever feel alone. We imagine that everyone around us feels connected and that we’re the weirdo who feels out of place. But it is seldom the case that we are the only one feeling lonely.
Aging can make us feel lonely. As we age, we lose friends and loved ones to death, moves, falling outs, or other circumstances. If our health or memory is impacted by aging, we can feel estranged from activities we used to enjoy. It sucks. Many people feel alone at the end of their lives. Palliative care hero Dr. Bob Gramling cites loneliness as “the single greatest source of suffering” for dying people.
But if we remember what Murthy says—that we are not the only one experiencing these losses—we can still find community or feel connected to our fellow humans. I try to remember as I go about my day that nearly everyone I interact with probably feels lonely in some way. It helps me feel more tender toward my fellow humans and like less of a weirdo.
I hope you’ll find value in what I share here, and if you do, please forward it to others. Let’s help each other along on this journey.
Onward, in hope and solidarity.
Elizabeth
Moving Forward
I blogged about what life was like in the third year of being widowed, how talking about death can improve our lives, why and how to make a will and advance directive before it’s necessary, and how to talk about your end-of-life wishes with loved ones.
I finish my certification as an end-of-life doula this week! I will bring my new skills to my hospice volunteer work for the time being, and then once I retire from MSU Denver, I’ll devote myself to writing and being an end-of-life doula and educator.
I started querying my book on how to be a widow. Finally!! The working title is Widowing 101 and it’s a “quick start guide” for newly widowed folks, particularly Gen X. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, as I had to write the darn thing as well as decide between self-publishing or going with an established publishing house. I decided to give myself a year to try to find a publisher and the clock has started!
This Might Help
The 2014 documentary Alive Inside convinced me that I want anyone involved with my care as I age to be required to play music for me. The film offers several moving examples of people with dementia who became much more lucid when they were able to listen to music connected to their past. I watched it on Prime.
Reading memoirs by people who have survived something I am trying to survive regularly inspires me. One of my favorites is by my wonderful and talented friend, Charlotte Maya, who wrote Sushi Tuesdays about being widowed. Another memoir I appreciated is Deep Waters by Beth Ann Mathews, which is about dealing with loss brought on by her husband’s stroke.
This TEDxTalk by hospice nurse Kim Vesey explains that death can be approached with the head and with the heart. She advocates for focusing on the heart, which means opening up to the experience.
Tell me . . .
When you feel lonely, what helps you reconnect with people?
What memoirs about loss have touched you?
Liz, if you only knew how un-weird you are.
Grief is a long and bumpy road.
And any number of folks are willing to walk alongside... silently, or gregariously chatting.
I am relatively new to loneliness having been with my husband for 40+ years. He died 2 years ago. I have always been independent so I thought being lonely would not happen to me. I was wrong.
Its been hard for me to accept. As Elizabeth writes, you think the people around you are all in the happy company of others. That is true in many instances, but not in all of them. I am learning that
you don't have to be alone to be lonely, but one of the differences being, profound grief gives
you a loneliness that only you can feel, and that can really bring you down.