Emily White on How to Deal with Loneliness

jealousy or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Emily White. Emily is a former lawyer

turned writer. She's the author of Lonely Learning to Live with Solitude. Emily is also written for The Daily Mail, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian. Her latest book, which will be released in January, is called count me in how I stepped off the sidelines, created connection and built a fuller, richer, more lived in life. Hi Emily, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.

I'm happy that you could join us tonight. You've got two books that I found both pretty interesting, so I'm looking forward to getting into discussing each of those in a little bit more detail. But we will start with the theme of the show, which is the parable of the two Wolves. So there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, life, there are two

wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. I found the parable almost kind of hauntingly apt to the work that I've been doing over the past seven years. Um. I started by writing about loneliness and momentess had been a really defining theme in my life for a long long time. And I'd say that would be kind of the first wolf, the wolf we don't like. And I if you had told me when I was writing my first book, which was about loneliness, that I would go on um to write a book about can action, I wouldn't have believed you.

I wouldn't have believed that second, better wolf was out there and in me as well. But I did go on. So I feel like i've sort of, I mean to stay within your parable, traveled from one wolf to the other. And I guess the main thing I take from the parable is just the truth of it that you wind up with what you feed, and that you can choose what you feed. And I traveled from loneliness to connection by making some specific choices and and and feeding that

decision to connect. And I was kind of surprised with where I landed. Um. But I like the parable because it does represent these choices that we can make in life and how those choices shape us. And so your your first book was titled Lonely, and it was about your experience with loneliness as well as you spent a lot of time sort of studying loneliness in general. Can you share a little bit about what you learned in

the researching and writing that book? Sure? I Lonely was published in two thousand and ten, and I was writing so I wrote it kind of in my mid to late thirties, and I was writing about a period in my early thirties, early to mid thirties when I was extremely lonely. That would be the bad Wolf. And I was sort of driven to write the book because I

needed to understand what was happening to me. I wanted to learn everything I could about loneliness, and so I learned about I taught myself about the physiology, the psychology, the sociology, everything really I could to understand loneliness and to understand the role that it had played and was continuing to play in my life. And I found I mean, it's not everyone who can spend sort of four years reading about their demon or their bad wolf, but I

found doing so extraordinarily helpful. It was sort of like a sustained period of mindfulness where I just stared at at what the problem in my life was, and I learned a lot. I talked to the irony was I think one of the things that helps. I wound up talking to just a huge number of people, mainly in the US about loneliness but also all over the world, and uh, it was really um. It was a great way to learn about more about something that I've been

confronting me my whole life. Really, So, what are the main themes out of that book? Tell me a little bit about what what loneliness is, maybe what some of the main causes are I'm curious about. As as you and I were talking briefly before the show, there's a couple of things I'm always curiousness, curiousness. There's a couple of things I'm always curious about in regards to loneliness. A couple of things that come up to me when

I think about it. And one is really the connection between loneliness and depression or I've heard people say that sometimes depression is um or yeah, depression is is masquerading is loneliness. And then the other thing I'd be curious about what you learned in that book is about the phenomenon of being lonely while in a group of people

or around other people. Sure, I I think a lot of the confusion between loneliness and depression arises from the fact that it's okay in our culture to say that you're depressed, and it's really not totally okay to say that you're lonely. So people are kind of blurring. The blurring the waters, muddying the water is intentionally there. For me, I knew I was lonely as opposed to depressed, because for me, depression has a tendency to blot emotions out.

And I found my loneliness was extremely acute. It was an extremely intense sense, and I knew what was wrong, you know. Depression and again I'm speaking for myself is often a sort of this global sense of what's wrong, you know, And I knew what was wrong. I felt too alone, and a lot of people are. Some people who write about loneliness and depression will talk about social depression, and by that they mean that it lifts when you feel connected. And I think when people say they're depressed

and lonely what they often but sometimes they are. I mean, you can be clinically depressed and lonely at the same time. But I think a lot of the times I like the notion of social depression. We don't use that term in conversation. It's it's only used when people are writing about loneliness. But the notion of feeling better when you're

connected is just so intuitively sound. And I found for myself that what I was calling depression, or what if I was calling loneliness, lifted when I found more connection. And that kind of flows into the sense of what the idea of being lonely in a group, because I firmly believe that you can be lonely on your own and you can be lonely in a group. My loneliness hit at its absolute worst. I used to be a lawyer, and I was spending every single day in an office

filled with practiced a specific type of loss. So these were like minded people who have decided to join the same firm, and I felt entirely alone and having I think there's a fatigue that goes along with hiding depression, but I think there's a special fatigue that goes along with hiding a loneliness because you're you have to pretend that you feel connected when you don't, and that's exhausting and um so I think in some ways it's easier to be lonely when you're alone, because at least no

one is asking you to pretend to be something that you're not. Um, it's often I hear this repeatedly. I've heard from many, many, many thousands of lonely people, and a lot of people will talk about and this is a dangerous thing that goes back to her, who do you feed parable? The danger is you feel better when you're alone, when you're lonely in some ways, and that can just start eating the loneliness. Is there a definition that you use for lonely or certain causes of loneliness

that we could maybe explore. It gets just kind of pedantic when people start defining loneliness. I think everyone knows what it is. And when you start seeing the written definitions, they seem to sort of start to break from the lived experience of loneliness. I always say, lonely loneliness is a sense, a subjective sense, because you can be with people, you can be in a marriage, you can be anything of being too much on your own and feeling vulnerable

and unhappy and resentful and angry because of it. Um, it's the isolation that's the problem, and again that sets it off from depression because so many things could cause depression, whereas with loneliness, it's this sense of just being being asked to be too much on your own. And what

what causes that that loneliness? What causes, say, for example, or what are some of the causes of people who are in very similar social situations, for example, one to feel very lonely and another to not feel so lonely. I think not getting what you need from that social situation. I mean some people. I mean, you know, the idea has been put forward that people we have different social needs, and so I might actually need more than you socially, and if that means not being met, maybe I'll get

lonely and you don't. But I think, I mean, and this is where we could start getting into, you know, which is what I think, as opposed to the research. I think we're entering an era where we're on our own so much, you know. Eric Kleinenberg's book Going Solo was a best seller because he documented what so many people were experiencing, which is the experience of living alone.

And if you live alone and if you don't have a lot of contacts outside of the home and maybe your workplaces in particularly social I think it's becoming increasing hard for us to make two ties that we need to fend off loneliness. And I guess I'm sort of supported in that, sadly in by the fact that lonelanness rates are going up depending on what group you look at. But almost all of these studies are carried out in the states of Summer in England. I guess, um, loneliness

is just kind of increasing across the board. Um, there's one exception to that is kind of an anomalous study involving teenagers. But I think we're growing lonelier as a society. And I and that's part of the reason I wanted to write Count Me In, which is my second book about connection, to see what can we do about that. You know, the question I got so many times from so many people was, you know, how do you feed the second well of how do you connect in a

disconnected era? And I kind of attack attack, I guess I explored would be a nicer word. I explored the problem for personal reasons, but I wound up getting really really interested in what do you do in this sort of um. In what Eric kleinbook is called The Going Solo Arra, he uses that in a in a positive sense, you know, um, that you can live alone and be happy. And I think that's absolutely true. But I think going solo is kind of a another way of what you know,

Robert Putnam called the bowling Alone era. You know, if you get a book after book with these titles that they're they're kind of telling you something about how we're living our lives today. And so you went on to write you you reference it there your your new book, which I think is coming out in January, called Count

Me In. And so in the book you talk about a definition of belonging that is, um, belonging equals the sense of being welcomed, need it, or accepted by a group, plus a sense of fitting in or matching with that group. I found that a really that was put forward by the University of Michigan nursing professor Bonnie Haggarty in the nineties, and I kind of made note of it when I started my research, But then as I started living the book,

I found it was just bang on. Like if there's some academic definitions of belonging that seemed to me to just kind of fly right past the point, And I thought that one just nailed it. You need to feel welcome and needed, and you need a sense of fit. And so there's kind of two things that need to be in place. And when those things are in place. UM, I explored this through volunteering, I put it through phase. I explored it through political protests. I explored it through

UM neighborhood. Um it Actually, she's right. I mean, you actually do get a sense of being part of something I keep saying larger and yourself. But I think it's so important because so many of our social tists today are about us and about our one on one relationships, and I was, for personal reasons, was really looking for something other than that. And I think what I came to call Haggardy's rule UM kind of captures what it

was I was looking for. You explored this idea of belonging, and you you determined that you wanted more of that in your own life, and you went out to try and find it, which is really what a lot of

the book is about. And I think there's a couple of things that you you just touched on there that that I found interesting in the book, and what you talked about, which was that it's that that ability to belong is out there, but that it's not necessarily always easy to find, and there's certainly not a one size

fits all thing for belonging. That you have to kind of go out and experience different things and try different things until you find both that that being needed and welcome that you talked about, as well as being needed and welcomed by people that you feel like our for lack of a better word, your people or your type of people. And I think it's Yeah, the book is my exploration of belonging, and I set it out sort of as a series of takeaways or ideas that people

could apply to belonging in our own lives. So I'm never expecting I'm not, you know. One of the things I did was volunteers zoo inspection of roadside zoos, and I'm not expecting anyone to do that, but that's where my search for belonging took me for various reasons. And I think we have an idea that it's easy to connect to it's easy to belong, you know, and you've mentioned having to do more than one thing. You you kind of have to try quite a lot of things

in order to find a sense of belonging. Sometimes it will appear right at the outset. Other times you kind of have to kind of make your way through the woods and and stick with it, I think, and I've seen this happen. I saw this happenyone was writing the book. If someone would show up once front events. But there was a community garden that I attended and found a great sense of belonging at, and they would show up

once and they would disappear. And that might be for the very valid reason that they decided it was the wrong fit. But I think for a lot of people, it's because they expect belonging to be there right away, and it never is. Belonging is something you always have to work at. You have to. That's why I liked your parable. You have to feed it, you have to stick with it. Um. It's something in a strange way that I think we today um have to learn. It's

I don't know that it comes so easily to us anymore. UM. You know, I start the book, I'm early in the book, I talked very very briefly about my father's life. And my father was born in small town Kentucky and the late nineteen twenties, and he and I think he in some ways was the inspiration for the book, because he just was born into these various senses of belonging to

He had an incredibly rich sense of place. He had a huge family, he had local place, UM, he had his religion, and he seemed to know how to belong in a way that I didn't. And my father passed away many years ago, and UM, I think I needed to relearn. I think I will not say we, I needed to relearn something that he was sort of given, um that I don't think we're given today. And I think that's a loss to us. So I was like, Okay, well, how do I recreate this in a completely different setting,

in a completely different era. Um. And you know, there's lots of things you don't want to recreate about what my father was born into. But there's kind of a a given quality to the belonging that he had that I don't think we have any more, that I tried to reproduce and that I think I found UM. And that goes back to here. Parable I was astonished at how much belonging is out there, um, kind of just

waiting for us. And it was an amazing discovery. It was an amazing feeling to realize that we still can belong today and ways to look really really, really different from my dad's life, but ways that are still really rich. And I go back, you know, we were talking about

social depression. They just it gives you this rich sense of connection that is energizing and makes you more enthusiastic about life and just gives you so many more resources in terms of social support and and all of those things. But I think are really good for us, and I think we can create it. Maybe you could tell us about a couple of the areas or things that you

tried UM and found for belonging. A couple that I thought were particularly interesting were the ones around um the faith, and then the other around the civic activism, around around some of the animal rights. Right. Well, I knew I wanted to try and belong through safe because um, first of all, the first of all, there's a couple of reasons. You know, people are still engaged in faith in a way that they're not engaged in you know, the p t A anymore. So I knew I wanted to try it.

And Chris belongs to three or four different PTA groups across the city. He doesn't have any kids, and but but it's he just goes is he a shrine or two? Well only in his house, he's got he's got a little car here. Um. So a lot of people are still engaged in faith, right, So it was something I wanted to try again because I had a religious education, um, meaning I went to Catholic school until I was sixteen, and I had kind of and that was maybe the one sort of sense of belonging that I was given.

Though it's all sort of fraught today. This was in the seventies. I started Catholic school, um, and I didn't find a sense of belonging there, and I kind of tried to get away from it into other religions and it just wasn't working. So I had to come back to Catholicism. So part of the book is about me trying to me trying to navigate finding a sense of belonging through faith and it's tricky. And I come to

this as someone who doesn't have trouble with faith. Um. It wasn't a matter of me trying to cultivate belief. I mean that was sort of already there. And I would never suggest to anyone that they go down this path, you know, and try and force themselves to believe in in something they don't believe in. That just isn't gonna work, right, Um, But if you've kind of are already kind of tilted that way. UM. Faith was interesting because UM, we tend to be or I was born in nine you know,

I was born into a faith tradition. It wasn't a choice I made. It was something that was handed to me. Um. And kind of trying to make that work in many decades later in the here and now was interesting and challenging in all sorts of ways that I wasn't expecting, um, but was also very rewarding. So that was kind of the intuitive thing that I did, which was kind of what happens when you try and find a sense of

belonging through faith. And that was kind of a fraud area for me because I'm gay, So you kind of prepare homosexuality up with Catholicism and you just get kind of like, you know, electric sparks flying. But it's still it's still kind of worked. Um. Whereas the political protest, I did a lot of work. UM. I used to be an environmental lawyer, and I did a lot of

work in the book. Um, one of you know, one of the kind of overarching principles that guided my work in the book is that you know, to belong you sort of have to root it in what you value. You know, if you if you start looking for belonging in something you don't particularly care about, you know, in my case faith, team sports, which I'm not putting down by any sense, it's just it's not going to take you anywhere because to me, team sports just they don't

they don't resonate that, it don't connect with anything. Whereas for me, animals have always been became an environmental lawyer, largely to protect species, and um, it just mattered so so so much to me my whole life. So I thought, what can I do? You know, I know, there's got to be a way of belonging through animals. Um And I tried. Since I had a very old cat at home at the time, I couldn't foster, I couldn't volunteer at animal shelters. So I wound up quite to my surprise, um,

and this is what I mean. But you gotta feed it, you gotta go where they're you know, where the arrows are pointing. Quite to my surprise, I wound up with an animal protest group in Toronto called Pig Saves Um that involved bearing witness um near an avatar on a very very busy roadway in Toronto, which is a massive city. Um.

And I found it. It was one of the most complicated forms of belonging that I found, not because of what I was being asked to do, though it is hard if you don't have any variance, uh, protesting, if you don't have any experience, start of building a sign on the edge of a roadway, as I did. But I'll just put as in a side. You get used

to holding a sign on a roadway very very fast. Um. But because I think you know, protests involves us joining together, and we don't do that so much in public anymore. So I think my caring, which really started out being about animals and and did take me into all these really interesting places related to animals and people who cared about animals, also taught me a lot about kind of joining with others in public today and how um unaccustomed some of us, many of us are to it today.

I really had to learn. But it was okay to kind of stand with a group in public and and you know, our cause happened to be pigs, with which a lot of your listeners won't care about or agree with. And that's okay. But I think what's impoor and is learning to stand together for something. And um, I now feel that that's the skill that I have that I can apply um in other areas, you know, if it's climate change or if it's the Keystone Xcel pipeline. You know,

I know how to do that now. And I would really you know, for people that one thing from the book, I mean, I'd like them to take a lot from the one thing would be, you know, learn how to to be with other people about a cause that you care about, because it's a it's a really great skill

to to have. Well, that part of the book was striking because you you said something there that I thought was really really interesting, and it was that, um, you were out there, you know, standing on the roadside sort of protesting about the treatment of these animals, and that you realize that there were people who really hated what you were doing and it and in a lot of cases it had a lot less to do with the fact that you what the cause was, but that that

in our culture today, caring too much about something is oftentimes looked down upon. It's considered un hip or not cool, and that and and that caring about things in itself was what was being judged. Yeah, I felt that. It took me a long time to figure I mean, it was with the protest group for quite a while, and people would always scream the most banal comments, Um, you know, I love bacon, you know, the baby screaming from criers, so they'd be completely protected, and they were also isolated

in their own little vehicles. You know, I love ham, I love bacon. You know, you'd hear the same things over and over and I couldn't figure out why these people were doing this. I mean a lot of people drove past or a lot of people would honk and support, but a lot of people felt compelled to scream their love of bacon, which is really not something no matter how much you like your b lt s, most people feel compelled to scream about So I thought, why are

they doing this? And the more it stuck with the and the more I looked at people's faces as they were screaming at me, would you also get used to Um? I realized it was caring, just as you said they didn't like. You know, in an individualist culture, which we have in spades, you're not supposed to say that you're connected to something else, or that what happens to another creature affects you or upsets you. You're supposed to be

in your own little, self contained bubble. And if you step out of that and you start pointing to all the links between us or saying, you know, what happens to that miserable, miserable pig and that horrendous pick truck affects me, you're kind of breaking the rules of individualism, and that really really harshly judged. You know, you're called I was called all sorts of things. I've got a pretty healthy ego, so you know, calling me names doesn't

really matter. Um. That also helped with my gay Catholicism. But and and I know other people won't be like that, but it was amazing the stant to which people are invested in in individualism today, are invested in the idea that we create our own destinies or that we're all responsible for ourselves so that we're not linked. And that was spelled up for me, very very very clearly in

my Caring project. Yeah, I think it's you know, I'm not sure exactly what that is, but when you were talking about the feeling of being out there and initially being embarrassed to be out there and being embarrassed to care about something, that really hit home with me because there is such a there's a real vulnerability to showing that you do care about something and that you're willing to to stand up for it. And I realize that's something that I am myself. I get very anxious about.

Maybe it's starting to change, but if you take a stand for something, you're sort of judged. And I think that's a massive, massive shortcoming in our culture, that this hesitation we feel about coming together and taking a stand and connection is part of that. There's a very very deep sense of connection and belonging that flows on the side of the subject from being part of a group like that, because when you do overcome the anxiety that you feel, and it's not easy. I'm not suggesting that

people are going to go out and do this. For me, it was really really important to challenge that anxiety. When you are able to connect in that way, it's a very deep, deep sense of connection that you feel to the other people that you're with in that group. We talked a little bit earlier about belonging versus connection, but you there's this idea of public versus private belonging or connection,

and that that private connection tends to be very intense. So, um, you know, we've got our we've got our good friends, and we share a lot of things, but the public belonging tends to be a less intense thing, and that that is not a bad thing, that's actually a good thing in a lot of ways. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah,

I um love you know. I described public belonging what people used to call a civic life, you know, and my editor, in a sort of a demoralizing moment, said, you can't use that phrase because no one's going to know where most people are going to know what you're talking about anymore. And I thought, my gosh, she's right to know. She's right. We don't know what a civic

life means anymore. So I kind of stuck with the terms private, which everyone did they understands, and public, which is a little more counterintuitive doing things that don't involve you know, some of these groups that I joined, I did make friends, but a lot of them, Like the

community garden. You don't know people's last names, you don't know where they live, and it doesn't matter because you're still part of the group that's doing the gardening and tending to the tomato beds, and you get to know them in this way that's less intense. And we see that as a failing. Well, you know, these people aren't your BFFs. Well, you know what, I have BFFs, and

they're fantastic people. But we need more than that. You know, as people sometimes say they're too tired to go out, and I say that too, And sometimes what we mean by that is I'm too tired to go and kind of have a high voltage conversation in Starbucks about my personal life. You know, I just it's too much. And there's this wonderful ease that comes with being with people not having to talk possibly at all, or not having

to say much. Um. Again, this is getting back to what my dad had, Like he kind of seemed to have his intuitive sense of being with people without you know, he wasn't want to, you know, kind of have a lot of conversations. But you can be with people in the public sphere or in the specific sphere in a way that's different, and it's relaxing because you're not sharing secrets um, you're doing things. You know, there's there's a there's a wonderful sense of just you know, having an

activity as opposed to just talking um. It's great for introverts. You know, I am um in many ways. So it sounds like it's surprising given the book, but a big introvert and I found that being in these big public groups didn't drain me of social energy. It actually gave me energy because I wasn't exchanging things on a one on one basis. And because we have so so so many of us have less belonging in our lives, we've

kind of lost sight of how important that is. And I think we we definitely value our private relationships, but I think we might overvalue them to a certain extent, or if not overvalue, they should be balanced with public relationships so that we don't have to be on all the time when we're with other people. What struck me about the book was that just the very way of framing that belonging and it's it's again back to that

belonging versus connection. I tend to think of going out there and connecting with people, making a new friend, or you know, if it's a romantic relationship or and and I think as a culture, we we do a lot less thinking about belonging to two groups. And it seems to be very different. As you said, then maybe when you know a generation ago. Yeah, I mean I was fascinated by Robert Pattin's Bowling Alone. I mean kind of fascinated.

It's probably the wrong word, and I've read it over and over and I just it captured, I mean not just for me. It was a huge bestseller, captured this sense people had that were missing, in another word, that we're not using a community, that we're missing community where we have our one on one relationships if we're lucky, because increasingly people are losing those one on one relationships.

You know, people's social circles, their private social world are shrinking, and we no longer have the public world to support us,

so we kind of have less support in general. But you know, the Robert Puttinon's whole argument is what we've kind of lost, or let go of, or had taken away from us, this public sense of belonging that people used to have, and they used to root their private relationships in that larger sense of belonging, and when you take it away, you're putting too much weight on your

private relationships. You know. I used an example in the book where something personally hard happened to me and it was wonderful to go to a group and know that no, not one single person there had to support me. You know, it could be one person or the other, and I could just kind of go from person to person and talk casually about what had happened, and if they wanted to engage, they could engage. You know, in an asking

less of people, they can give us morey. They can provide us with all sorts of different ways to support, you know, in a way that my best friend kind of called on to sort of be on, you know, and I have a problem, she has to help, you know, not everyone in our life has to serve that role. And if you free people up from serving that role,

they can be so many other things to you. And I think that was one of the best things that I learned in the book was just how good it felt um And I think this is why I liked Catholic school as a child, actually, was just how good it was to be kind of part of a group, and that today sounds like the ultimate conformist thing to say, and I think it's actually one of the most radical things you can say in a culture where we're expected to be so much on our own, you know, we

don't have to be We can be with other people too well. I think it's an interesting transitional time because I think that like everything there are, there are good

and bad sides of everything. And I think that the fragmentation of some of these larger so that there used to be is positive in some ways because I think it it allows for I do think there's a value to individualism, and I do think there's a value to being able to be who you are, and and the the broader that a group gets, the more conformity is potentially needed to fit. So I think it's an interesting

where do you find that that middle ground. I've always been fascinated by and um English philosopher Alaine de Boton, and he wrote a book called Religion for Atheists, and his his general premises, you know, he's an atheist, but he looks at everything that we've that we've lost by not having um religion in the sense of the things that are religion provided to us, as far as the community and the rituals and the and the support and

all that. And I've really that really resonates with me because I do think we've lost a lot of that, and yet in some ways, I think it's very positive that some of them, some of the loss of religious belief I think has had also some positive impacts to society. So it's it's one of those of finding the right balance between between those things. Oh absolutely, I mean I write as a twenty one century lesbian who I mean

was born into Catholicism. But ultimately it was my choice to make in a way that um, the generations before me didn't have any choice. I mean that's what you were. UM. But I think it's kind of a baby in the bath water scenario where we've thrown out in our quest for personal autonomy, which is so important and again, you know, and kind of living example of this, I get to live a life openly that no one else in my family would have been allowed to live. Um. We've probably

gotten rid of too much. UM. So I think you know you've used the word balance. It's really restoring that balance. UM. And maybe we're at a tipping point where we're realizing we've gotten rid of too much and we need to start to work to bring some of it back. Yeah, but I'm certainly not you know, you know, emphasizing that we all have to be one thing, or we have

to be what we were born into. You choice. My chapter on faith is actually about me trying to make various choices, um, other than Catholicism, and exploring different faith and ultimately winding up back at Catholicism. And that's a very different journey, you know, choosing to be there. Um, I guess in a sense, I chose my tradition, which

is a mix of individualism and and tradition. But um it is about balance, and I wouldn't ever want to come across the saying, oh, you know, we need to go back to the old ways where no one had any choices. The takeaway from me that that sort of hit if I tie tie your your first book and your second together for me was that loneliness is a real thing, and I think it's something a lot of people deal with, and we all tend to think there's a tendency to think of the cure for loneliness is

another friend or a girlfriend. And I think what count Me In does is a book as points to a lot of other ways to counter loneliness that are not dependent on those individual Very was very important personal relationships. Yeah, pretty much so, and I mean I think it's very doable. I mean, telling someone who's lonely to go find a partner or go find a best friend as a pretty tall order. And that's kind of the advice thing given out ta meetings all the time, because it's just not

that that that has not worked out. So you know, there's this sort of a middle zone where you can get to know people in other ways and it doesn't have to be a best friend relationship, and you might very well find some good friends in the groups that you join. Exactly. Well, Emily, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. Your book is out in g Anuary of two thousand fifteen, and uh, I'd encouraged the listeners to check it out. I really

enjoyed it. Thank you very much. We'll take care and we will talk again soon. Thanks a lot, all right, bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the one you Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community.

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