The antidote to loneliness is solitude.
Solitude is a gift we give ourselves, and it's necessary for growth.
For the audio version of this essay, please click here:
It’s easy to grow lonely when you spend at least half of your life waiting in medical facilities.
That became my reality when Sarah was born: a constant rotation of appointments. There were physical and occupational therapies, diagnostic exams, pre-surgical intakes, and routine well-child check-ups. There’s the initial phone call, the waiting on hold for thirty minutes, the scheduling, the packet of paperwork, the driving to and from, and the sitting in lobbies, then exam rooms.
Before Sarah could speak or walk, I’d huddle in a remote area of congested waiting rooms in an attempt to cocoon ourselves from the strangers surrounding us. I knew no one else who had a baby with Apert syndrome, and I was told there were only a handful—probably—throughout the entire state of Indiana.
It’s isolating to believe you’re the only one.
These past eleven years, I’ve rotated between self-pity and concern for both Sarah and my other four children. From why me to what will the long-term effects of this type of lifestyle be for them?
Before Sarah entered our family, Ben and I had forged solid friendships with a wide swath of groups, ranging from neighbors to historical friends to women’s and men’s communities at our church. But after her birth, the connections whittled away, in my mind, rapidly. Not all of them, but most. I figured people didn’t know what to say or do, that some friends didn’t know how to relate to us anymore.
Or to my explosive, raw, and emotionally arresting grief.
When I am lonely, my inclination to burrow inside my home as a recluse becomes enticing. It’s because I need to feel safe somewhere, somehow, when everything around me is chaotic or uncontrollable. Withdrawing from others is a way for me to feel protected from the risk of being fully transparent and vulnerable.
Logic tells me that immersing myself in social activities cures loneliness, but it doesn’t. Busyness is seldom a solution for interior pain.
I found that, in those early weeks after bringing Sarah home from the hospital, I needed to find myself in the midst of both the isolation and the frenetic buzz of check-ins and phone calls from concerned friends and family. I was answering the same questions to multiple people:
What was Sarah born with again?
She has to have a bunch of surgeries, right? What are they?
Do you know how long you’ll be gone? Do you need anything?
What happened? How did you find out about her diagnosis?
What’s going on? I heard…
It’s exhausting when you face an unexpected, undesired life event and well-intentioned people blast you with questions you are trying to decipher for yourself. You move from one jarring crisis to the next with little reprieve and hardly any downtime to process your thoughts or feelings, or even to truly rest in a restorative way.
Loneliness settled in for me once I realized I had to navigate this new path largely by myself. That’s not to say our family was unsupported. We were. The network surrounding us was strong, and many strangers in our region who heard about Sarah rallied to raise funds that covered fuel for our back-and-forth trips to the children’s hospital in Indianapolis. Every day, a neighbor or friend would drop by our house, offering free babysitting for Felicity, a meal, or housecleaning.
The gestures of generosity poured in, and I was overwhelmed by the care and concern displayed by so many. But still, I felt alone in my grief. I didn’t know how to talk about it.
One of my closest friends, Julie, would check in regularly. She’d bring a care package with homemade jams, some local soap and hand cream, a few goodies for Felicity. Instead of pelting me with questions, she gently offered to sit with me for a while. There was no rush, no time constraints. And in that space shared with a trusted friend, my pain surfaced. I howled, I raged, I wept.
Julie’s response: “I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but I’m here to listen and be with you, whatever you need right now.”
Her ability to witness my pain boosted my resolve to metabolize my suffering rather than distract and ignore it by staying busy, or by wallowing in the woe-is-me mentality. I realized that, if I were going to practice resilience, then I needed to learn the best method for me to make room for intentional relationships and also solitary time to think through and feel my grief.
One practice that helped me navigate this season of crisis management was selecting a book I believed might spiritually and emotionally nourish me. I sat with a paragraph or a chapter—however much I could digest without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time—and I would reflect in the silence on its meaning for my life.
At first, when the heartache and sorrow intensified during these solo sessions, I noticed my reflexive reaction to the default defense mechanisms: find something to do, clean the kitchen, finish the grocery list, fold the onesies, return the doctor’s phone call. But I trained myself to set these aside, however compulsory they seemed, and allow myself to really feel the amalgam of emotions that emerged.
Over time, I realized that this discipline of retreating to the sanctuary of my heart became both a sacred and healing practice. My loneliness gradually dulled, so that it was manageable instead of ostracizing. Here’s a quote from my reading at that time that offered perspective:
It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It’s there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received. In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.1
Today, the appointments and surgeries and therapies have lessened in frequency for Sarah. But what I gained from those early months of her life was a revelation I have not forgotten and continue to implement on a regular basis: to find a quiet space inside myself, to center my thoughts there, to listen to my intuition, to attend to my wounds.
I can’t continue to chase the Western cultural paradigm of acquisition and productivity, this narrative that a person is only worth as much as their home or vehicles or position in a company or wealth, that a person is only worth as much as what they can do rather than who they are.
Personhood is a gift. It’s inherent in each human. We don’t have to be, or do, anything in order to be fully valuable and valued, lovable and loved. The discovery of this truth happens when we give ourselves permission to pause in the stillness of a few quiet moments and lend our ear to our heart’s murmurings.
What is inside that awakens when you spend time alone with your thoughts? Often, love stirs to life. Solitude is a gift we give ourselves, and it’s not an indulgence. It’s a necessity for growth.
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The Book Club for Busy Readers
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be hosting a monthly virtual book club for all of my Substack subscribers, starting in January. Generally, these will be held on the second Sunday of every month (unless otherwise noted) from 2-3:30 PM Eastern via Zoom. In two cases, I have authors who will make a guest appearance to discuss their book with us. If you are interested in joining, I will need you to send an email (jeannie [dot] ewing 07 [at] gmail [dot] com—without spaces), so that I can extend the Zoom invitation month to month.
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Call for Submissions
Something I’ve been churning in my mind for a while is how to showcase other people’s stories of resilience. I decided I’d like to reach out to all of you and see if you are interested in sharing what “I grow strong again” means to you. If you’d like more information, please click below:
If you enjoyed reading this article, be sure to check out these related essays:
Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life (Ave Maria Press, 2004), 26. (Emphasis mine.)
My solitude was lonely when I was young and my loneliness was lonelier when I was young. Now that I am older (and ironically, less alone), I have also understood that some of us are lonely together. We may have different responsibilities and concerns than our neighbors or colleagues or sometimes even our friends, but we are never truly alone. There are unseen others who are learning to make peace with their solitude or have come to fully embrace the strength in their solitude. Especially if we are readers and/or writers, we are never truly alone. We are alone, yet together. And not that far away from one another. This is what I tell my daughter too.
"It’s exhausting when you face an unexpected, undesired life event and well-intentioned people blast you with questions you are trying to decipher for yourself."
Girlfriend! I hear you. Although my story of loneliness and solitude is entirely different, the underlying theme is the same. No one could really understand what I was dealing with...my husband of 10 years verbally and physically abused me so that he could leave the marriage to become a monk! the contradiction of that was something no one I knew could help me understand. I found myself homeless, divorcing, and utterly lost.
And, like you, I had a friend (also named Julie) who brought me care packages, welcomed me into her guest bedroom, and said "I can't know what you're going through, but I can listen and be with you as you figure it out for yourself." There's such magick in that kind of support. The silent support.
I had to make friends with solitude as I faced the loneliness of being a homeless divorcee. Solitude was the version of me that sat in the passenger seat, played music too loud, and put her feet up on the dash when driving long distances. I love her!