How to Fight back against an Epidemic of Loneliness

On the healing power of an unexpected reunion with some of my favorite women.

Oh, just me and my favorite Oscar nominee.

In 2020, several months after the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, I was taking one of my rare trips to the grocery store when I saw my good friend and neighbor sweeping her front porch. We both stopped and looked at each other, both masked, and tentatively said hello from a distance. Apart from my husband and daughter, it was the first time in months I had spoken to someone I knew in person, and I could sense it felt good for both of us. I had begun to feel a deep well of loneliness I wasn’t sure would ever go away. We stayed there talking, me on the sidewalk and her in her front yard, for what felt like a lifetime but was probably closer to fifteen minutes. In that moment, it felt as good as any brunch, dance floor, or secret I had ever shared with a best friend. During a lull in the conversation, she placed her broom against her building wall, wiped her brow, and asked cautiously, “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Of course,” I responded.
“Do you think . . . Would it be okay to maybe ask you for a hug? With our masks on?”
I did not hesitate in my response. We needed each other, however briefly.
“Yes,” I said as I reached my arms out to her. We hugged over her fence for as long as we could hold. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about that hug and the world of loneliness we’ve been living in. Ironically, I’m not alone; last year, in an official Surgeon General Advisory, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy wrote about what he calls, "an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” He noted how disconnected so many of us have started to feel over the last several years, whether due to the pandemic, political polarization, or a myriad of other reasons. “People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant,” he writes, “Even when they couldn’t put their finger on the word ‘lonely,’ time and time again, people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, from every corner of the country, would tell me, ‘I have to shoulder all of life’s burdens by myself,’ or ‘If I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice.’”

This idea of shouldering the burden of loneliness is something I’ve felt deeply over the last few years, and it’s a large part of why I started this community: to have a space to connect with each other in a safe and productive way that can’t be controlled by the algorithms of traditional social media. I’ve felt a sense of drifting apart and a gradual decline in our day-to-day and face-to-face interactions, even just the mundane ones I once took for granted like asking the grocery store clerk where she got her awesome sweater or having an unexpected and fascinating conversation with an Uber driver about the time he was abducted by aliens just after college. (This absolutely was a convo I had with a driver in San Francisco recently. Obviously, I gave him five stars.) Instead, grocery stores are replacing cashiers with self-checkout machines, food can be delivered to our homes via cell phone app without us ever speaking to a single person, and driverless cars may someday soon become the norm on our highways.

Our loneliness seems to be driven by the disconnection we’re already facing in the world, and to contend with that, we’ve begun to normalize it. Some of the more recent advancements in the tech world—like the notable (and largely unregulated) increase in the use and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI)—have led to the creation of extraordinary tools used to track endangered animals and help deaf children learn to read. Applied in other ways, these same extraordinary tools can become extraordinary weapons detrimental to our personal and professional growth, as well as our interpersonal relationships. AI is being used to avoid everything from tough conversations to the way we get an education. Even film and TV studios fought ruthlessly last year for the right to replace human beings with AI in some of the most creative aspects of the entertainment business. (They lost, for now.) What’s next? Getting married to a hologram? Cool cool cool.

I know that not all loneliness is a bad thing. Sometimes staying away is necessary for our mental, physical, or emotional health, like the stay-at-home orders during the pandemic—vital social gathering time-outs to help keep ourselves and others safe. But now the pandemic is over, sort of, except we had no real exit plan, people are still suffering from Long COVID, and our mental health is taking a toll from trying to understand and make sense of it all. There’s also the distance we’ve needed to take from family and friends in the era of Trump and the polarizing conflicts in the Middle East, further eroding our connections to one another and adding to the feeling that we truly are alone in whatever it is we are fighting for or against.

The intensity of the last decade along with our ability—for better or worse—to stay constantly updated on devastating events as they unfold has been hard to reckon with. There was the hostile and sickening 2016 U.S. presidential election, followed by the empowering yet painful #metoo Movement, then the pandemic, the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that summer we all took to the streets in protest, the January 6th insurrection, the brutal attacks on Israel and the horrifying atrocities currently taking place in Gaza. How can any one of us contend with all this? How can we not feel alone in the face of it all? I have been walking around for the last two years feeling like a body spit out by a tornado, having no idea where I’ve landed, what’s happened to my life, the people I love, or what the future holds.

Friends, if I’m starting to sound like your Great-granny Marge who survived polio twice and just can’t seem to get over the good old days, you’re right. But this is part of how I’m processing my own sense of loneliness too: by thinking about what’s been lost and, perhaps, what is ready to be found.

At the end of last year, something unexpected and beautiful happened that transformed me and pulled me out of this loneliness. From the outside, it may not seem like much—a reunion of four best friends who were once in some movies together—but this spontaneous gathering reminded me of several things I had forgotten in the pain of it all. Most importantly, that to fight loneliness and win, sometimes the strongest strategy can be as simple as reconnecting with the ones you love the most.

I was invited to a party celebrating my dear friend America Ferrera for her work in the film Barbie, and I knew our other friend Blake Lively was co-hosting the event. (You can watch my interview with Blake here as part of our interview series, Further Ado.) There was just one person missing to make a reunion complete: the fourth sister, Alexis Bledel. Even though we don’t live close to each other anymore, I reached out to Alexis to see if she could join me at the event. “Any chance you want to fly in for this and be my date!?” I wrote to her. The next day she wrote back that she was buying her plane ticket. It was the first time all four of us would be together in the same room in almost half a decade.

We planned to celebrate America at her event, but we also filled up every extra moment we could together. The night before the party, we gathered in Blake’s living room and talked for hours, far past our own bedtimes and those of the nearly dozen children between us. The next day, we got ready together for America’s event, trying on each other’s clothes and sharing makeup like a (very fancy) middle school slumber party. (This really just means I tried on Blake’s clothes and put on Blake’s makeup and put my teeny tiny feet in her Louboutins and walked around like a toddler in her mother’s shoes.) We took selfies like teenagers, held hands like lovers, untangled each other’s hair from the big jewelry hanging around our necks and from our ears. We took care. Lots of it.

Friend goals, achieved.

When it was done, we still couldn’t say goodbye, so we went to dinner together that night and saw each other the next day and again the day after that. When you’re reconnected with the women you love—like deep down in the marrow of your bones love—time disappears, and so too does the notion of having lost any of it, having wasted it, or having been hurt by its persistence. All you’re left with is that good stuff: the unconditional love of the women standing right there in front of you. The ones who know you the best, who remind you of all that you're worth in this world just by being near you.

When our reunion was over, I was left with such a strong injection of dopamine running through my body—a kind of happiness and lightness of being I had not felt in a long time. We have had a text chain between the four of us for as long as texting has been around (seriously aging myself here), but when we got together in person, it was something different. When we held each other, literally, it shifted something in each of us, as if healing a part of ourselves we did not even know needed it until we were finally all together. 

I believe this loneliness epidemic we’re living in is going to be here for a while, especially in an election year like the one we are about to face. When I think of simple ways we can fight that disconnect and the loneliness we often don’t have control over, I think it can be as simple as turning to our closest friends and bravely telling them we need them. It won’t fix everything, but it can carry us through a lot of it. What would it look like if we took a few extra steps in our lives to show up for someone we love in person or even over Zoom if we could? To look them in the eye, not just the text, and acknowledge that they are hurting or share our own pain or celebrate their triumphs? What would the gesture of talking to someone—a neighbor or a perfect stranger—do for their day, for their whole life? What would it do for us? How can each of us, in our own way, show up and fight loneliness in a world that feels dead set on pulling us apart?

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Do you have a close friend you miss that you don’t get to see much anymore or maybe a good friend who is no longer with us? What would you say to them now, if you could? If they were right here in front of you, arms wide open? Share your stories and thoughts in the comments, if you’d like to. I always love to read them. Happy Women’s History Month, and as always, thank you for being here.

Coming up!

• Good Riddance: Join us in the Chat for a weekly space to let go of something that’s been bugging you. Every Saturday, I’ll share something I’m letting go of and invite you to do the same. It can be big or small, serious or silly—an interaction that left you feeling not so great, a piece of clothing you’ve been hanging on to for too long, or your anger over a tragically canceled TV show that ended on a cliffhanger. For All Subscribers.

• Further Ado: 2024 guests for our video interview series include Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Suleika Jaouad, Eliza Clark, and many more to be announced. For Paid Subscribers.  

• Readings + Prompts: A couple times a month, I'll share a new video made just for you reading something I've written over the years—a poem, an essay, an unpublished work (GULP)—as well as a unique prompt based on that work. Come get entertained and creatively energized. For Paid Subscribers. 

• Here, Take This, I Love You: Every month we will give away memorabilia and artifacts from the vaults of my office. A signed Joan of Arcadia script! Limited edition broadsides of poetry! Some gum Alexis Bledel once chewed! (I would never.) For Paid Subscribers.