In 2026, Loneliness Awareness Week is June 9 – 15. Apparently, some people are unaware of their loneliness, which baffles me because I am acutely aware of mine.
For decades I have been hosting game nights, holiday celebrations, movie nights, birthday parties, and potlucks partly because I enjoy people and partly to keep my loneliness to a minimum. After one of my gatherings, a friend said to me that she had been in a bad mood for days and hadn’t been sure what was wrong. After my party, she realized she had needed social time with others. She had been spending too much time alone, and she thanked me for the evening.
I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to understand when they’re experiencing loneliness. Maybe it’s the American fixation on individualism and going it alone that blinds us to our need for others. I suspect that millions of people experience what my friend does. They spend weeks or months, or maybe even years, focused on themselves and keeping their own company. They think everything’s fine because so many others do the same thing.
Maybe their parents don’t/didn’t have friends, or maybe their neighbors keep to themselves. Maybe co-workers go straight home after work, without spending time with each other (if they go into the office at all). Even before the pandemic, we had normalized solitude. If everyone does it, then it’s normal. Right? Thus do we live in a culture of loneliness, like people unknowingly walking around with a disease.
Since I’ve always been baffled by people pleasers, I recently read a book about them. It mentioned childhood causes of people pleasing behavior and the ways these behaviors show up in adulthood. I didn’t see myself in most of the adult behaviors, but I did see myself in one. What I understand from what I read is that not getting the emotional support you need in childhood can leave you with a feeling of loneliness that lasts into adulthood and never quite gets filled.
A tiny representation of the gatherings I’ve hosted.
It was a horrifying thing for me to read. My mother got her emotional support from me, and I don’t think my dad ever knew how to give emotional support at all. So, yeah, I spent my childhood not getting what I needed from those who raised me, but does that mean my loneliness will never end? Is it too late to put in place what I didn’t get as a child?
I’ve wondered for a long time why I’m driven to bring people together so regularly. It’s occurred to me that maybe God created this unending loneliness in me because it motivates me to build community and God needs more community builders. But fortunately I don’t believe in a god. If there were such a god who would do that, he would be a very cruel one.
So I live my loneliness by bringing people together, and by leaving my home all week long to meet friends and make new ones. I wish time with others fixed loneliness, but I don’t think it works that way. But at least time with other people makes it better. It helps.
This organization has all kinds of resources for people who want to build more community or who want to join other people’s efforts. I have been building community for decades, in my personal life, my workplace, and my neighborhood, but maybe I’ll check out activities I don’t have to organize. I get tired of initiating baking competitions at work, potlucks in my neighborhood, and nights out at the movies with friends. It would be nice to go to someone else’s event that I didn’t have to organize. It would be nice to go to an event to which someone welcomed me.
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