and this reunion still giving all the famous best friend energy to carry us through! my college girlfriends and I have this type of bond. there is a larger group of us spread out but the 4 I am closest to at the moment we are just as you described.
we get together with all our kids for a week in the summer, and, we take mom trips. some photos here, before I had a substack.
Thank you for this exploration into loneliness and sharing the behind the scenes story about reuniting with your girls. I remember seeing those photos of you four and thinking how incredible your reunion was!! I could feel it.
2 weeks ago I reunited with my best friend from highschool... We've been friends for 25 years (this summer will be our 20th high school reunion). While we remained friends, we were on a bit of a hiatus for the past decade+. But when we met, we jumped back into teenage friends. It was incredible, like yours. 💖💖
Gosh I felt this to my core Amber 💞 I moved away for 8 years to another state and I remember the feeling of being away from friends and family and the loneliness this brought with it. Missing out on so many events, the arrival of nieces and nephews and not being able to be there to support my loved ones and dear friends. Fast forward 10 years, having moved back and now I feel the distance from my amazing university friends that I met during this time away. I recently got the chance to catch up with a couple of these friends and it was like no time had passed. We fell right back into a comfortable rhythm, sharing our lives and deepest thoughts and feelings. We could have sat and chatted for days but eventually the pull of our lives meant we had to part with promises to ‘catch up again soon!’ I hope this happens soon but the reality is it will probably be some time before we can make it happen again. In the meantime it’s social media and text messages to stay connected ❤️❤️
This post. 😩💕 Needing to be away from family and friends during isolation made me realize just how much I need them.
During the pandemic, a fellow mom who's daughter went to preschool with mine, reached out. We compared our pandemic prevention strategies and precautions and were on the same page. Friday's were our days: we would transparently describe our week to make sure we were comfortable then she'd come to our house with her daughter. Our girls would play while we drank our coffee and had much needed time to just be together as friends. She is the friend of a lifetime. Chosen family at this point. And our girls have a similar friendship. I tell her all the time that her reaching out saved me.
I have a dear friend who, one year ago, was seeing her mother to end of her life. She had been caring for both her parents for several years, much of the time in another country. Both our moms have/had dementia and our email correspondence about all of it was epic and so important to both of us. She brought her mom back here for what ended up being the last few months of her life. And then her mom died. It was sad and hard and the very best thing that could have happened to both of them. Almost immediately we started seeing each other again in person. She is close to my husband, too and the three of us have spent more time together in the last year than we did for the 10 years preceding it. She and I will meet for lunch at noon and close the place down at 4:00, and then stand in the parking lot talking for another hour. I had no idea much I missed her actual physical presence in my life. My mother is still in the process of dying from Alzheimer's and my friend's support is such a gift. Reconnecting in person with this one friend has changed the color of my life. It is such a comfort to have her back.
Very thoughtfully written Amber. I'm an only child, as you are, but I was raised without Holllywood, parties or very much sociability. I've been alone most of my life, even when living with a man, so I do much better with it than most others. Still, Covid kicked my tentative ties to others to the curb; I lost friends to it, and because of it. At my age, people die much more frequently than they ever did before. People I really want to visit with are my best friend Bonz (you know her), and my kiddos, grands and great grands. I knew when moving to Canada it wouldn't make a difference in seeing them, and it hasn't. If I didn't go see them, rest assured I wouldn't see them, and I haven't. I miss them all dearly, but I have for many years, not just the past four. We are scattered to the four corners of this continent, quite literally. I hope to one day soon catch connecting flights over a month or so and visit all of them.
Love this! I was finishing up my “lonely” essay for Sunday Morning Records, when I read this and it really helped me understand my own loneliness a bit more. I was feeling very lonely writing about loneliness but your post reminded me that loneliness happens simultaneously with the loneliness of the people around you. It just takes an internal nudge to recognize your feelings in the other folks around you. We’re alone together. Thanks Amber.
Thank you so much for sharing this - I didn’t even realize how much I needed it 🫶 all of my life I have not only been extremely fortunate to have made deep connections with some of the most amazing women in the world, all of whom I am still friends with, but I also have been so lucky enough to always live close to at least one of them - now, due all of these friends, including myself, living in completely different states, plus COVID/children/lack of finances, I have only seen 2 of these friends (each once) in the last 7 years. And due to chronic debilitating migraines/pain, I rarely am able to see the one close friend of mine that I live near. These women are all my chosen family, the people who inspire me, motivate me, and feed my soul, make my life BETTER and it’s hard to even begin to articulate how deleterious it has been to my entire being not having them in my life for so long 💔 thanks to you, however, I am inspired and determined to make a friend reunion happen come hell or high water! Like you, i know that even a few days with these friends would refuel my soul/spirit, and I desperately need that right now, as im sure so many others do 💖🫶💖🫶💖🫶
I've also recently found myself totally engrossed with news reports and journal articles on this "growing epidemic" and have been spending more time in thought about how to heal, repair, and foster both new and old relationships in a lonely, "post-COVID" world.
I gave birth to my first daughter in Manhattan in April 2020, and I'm still processing the trauma--like most of the world, I assume.
During one of the most joyous times of our lives, the world was closed. The silence of the experience was deafening in our 500 square-foot apartment in Queens, and we--my husband and I--are still struggling to find our footing, not just in our new identities as parents, but also in a world that has increasingly become more and more closed--politically, socially, and emotionally.
I am hopeful. I do feel that those of us who continue to bravely express ourselves and give a voice to our loneliness will find what it is that makes us miraculous human beings: love, community, peace, joy, humility, and empathy.
I’m grateful when a writer taps into something so deeply important and universal! The waves of emotion and yearning to go, and be with my dearest women friends was felt. thank you for this and all of your other work that puts a spotlight on vital issues.
I can relate to so much that you’ve shared. I truly did not leave my house in the daytime during the pandemic. Sightings of me by others were incredibly rare. I was slowly yet surely becoming a hermit. And I worried a little that I might be getting too comfortable in this new way of being. I was and still am fortunate to work remotely. So work wasn’t an issue and I was on video conference meetings all day every day. I wasn’t seeing my family as I didn’t risk getting my mom or anyone else sick. In actuality, I am the one who is immunocompromised so maybe that’s why I truly isolated as a protection for myself as well as others.
Eventually I braced leaving the house to get some sunshine and lo and behold what awaited me outside? My sweet neighbors. A husband and wife who got married the year I was born. They are empty nesters so I think when they saw me it reminded them of their daughters. So here we are, in our masks, chatting about how we never see each other. Them wondering if I was okay. Texting me but never seeing me. We’d stay outside literally talking from a distance for 45 to 60 minutes. It became a routine. I felt like they were sitting in the window because whenever I would come out to get to my car, one of them, usually the wife/mother would come out to her porch and chat with me about her growing up in Sicily and then moving to the United States as a child for 45 minutes. And then when I’d return from running my errands, the husband/father would be outside and his chats were usually upwards of 90 minutes. Often about his 95 year old brother who raised him and he wasn’t able to visit him in his skilled nursing facility due to the pandemic. I recognized that they each needed this connection and I was grateful they were each pulling me out of my isolation. Again I had gotten too comfortable in it.
These interactions with my neighbors helped me realize I had this incredible unrecognized belonging to connect with my friends. My sister-friends. So seeing you four together in the same space, I totally get that. My friendships run 20 to 40 years long. From childhood friends to high school friends to college friends to coworkers who became family when I experienced health issues for a solid 10 years, taking turns cooking and caring for me during my time of need 15 years ago. There’s nothing like a beautiful sisterhood to center you. Celebrating each other. Crying together. Lifting each other up. Laughing about nothing and everything.
I am an introvert who truly enjoys her alone time which is why I got worried during the pandemic as I didn’t want to fully embrace that side of me. I want to remain open to gathering my friends and family together, celebrating and loving on each other. Even if I am not feeling that loneliness because I cherish my alone time, I know that’s rare and being with loved ones near and far is a priceless gift that we should cherish. I now make more of an effort to plan special quality time together with my groups of special sister-friends. Trying to get back to my pre-pandemic lead organizer of small group friend and family gatherings.
Hi, Amber! I'm from Spain, and I'm in my mid 20s, and even though I am younger than you, I can totally relate to everything you've said: I met most of my friends in different periods of my life (e. g. studying abroad, doing a Master's Degree in another town) and now they're all scattered all over Spain or the world (they're either from another countries or just move abroad to build their lives). Some of them live close to me, but, since we're all busy, we don't really see each other. Recently, I've managed to reunite with friends I hadn't seen in a long, long time.... and it's like the connection and the love were still there, nothing had changed!! I hope we all get to feel less alone soon! Thank you for sharing your thoughts (and an insight of such a magical bond) with us <3
I don't have many friends who are around my age, but there's a person very dear to me: she's one of my cousins, my semi-confidante, and like a big sis for me (she's only nine months older than me). We also share a love of arts (she's a kids music teacher and a dancer. And i'm a painter, although my major's not art, it's English).
Yes, i can relate deeply to that loneliness epidemic. When the COVID pandemic started, i was depressed. And whenever i heard that one of my family members has covid, i would wallow in the thought of losing that person (what if she dies and i'm not able to say goodbye to her ? These types of questions). Instead of focusing on myself, i focused on others. Now, i'm not as depressed as before, but there are times when i feel disconnected from others, even from my parents.
Yes, there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. I have always need more alone time than most people I know, but the loneliness since my husband died 2.5 years ago is unrelenting. Strangely enough, it's in my darkest moments that I feel closer to him, so I don't fight it. That's what I'm writing about on Substack. I never knew someone's absences could fill up so much space.
During the early days of Covid, when I was home with my newborn, my newish (at the time) friend who lives around the corner would check in on me, let me know when she was running to the store to see if I needed anything, leave food on my porch and hosted my family for socially distanced hangs in her backyard when weather permitted. It was life-giving to have someone show up for me that way when I was so isolated and lonely. Not long after, an old friend who’d been living out of the country moved back to town and bought a house two minutes from us and her son and my son have become best buddies. Another former co-worker and dear friend lives just down the road and we continue to go for “walk + talks” at the park together. Eventually, all four of us connected, and now we have a bookclub. ☺️ When I tell you these women sustained me and brought me back from the brink after the height of the pandemic, I am not exaggerating. I feel so grateful for their friendship and to have such lovely women living so close (many of my friends no longer live in the city). It’s incredible how gathering regularly with friends again has improved my mental health. In-person connection is SO vital. ❤️
that masked HUG! I felt it.
and this reunion still giving all the famous best friend energy to carry us through! my college girlfriends and I have this type of bond. there is a larger group of us spread out but the 4 I am closest to at the moment we are just as you described.
we get together with all our kids for a week in the summer, and, we take mom trips. some photos here, before I had a substack.
https://indulgeinspireimbibe.blogspot.com/2023/06/best-of-morocco.html
Thank you for this exploration into loneliness and sharing the behind the scenes story about reuniting with your girls. I remember seeing those photos of you four and thinking how incredible your reunion was!! I could feel it.
2 weeks ago I reunited with my best friend from highschool... We've been friends for 25 years (this summer will be our 20th high school reunion). While we remained friends, we were on a bit of a hiatus for the past decade+. But when we met, we jumped back into teenage friends. It was incredible, like yours. 💖💖
Gosh I felt this to my core Amber 💞 I moved away for 8 years to another state and I remember the feeling of being away from friends and family and the loneliness this brought with it. Missing out on so many events, the arrival of nieces and nephews and not being able to be there to support my loved ones and dear friends. Fast forward 10 years, having moved back and now I feel the distance from my amazing university friends that I met during this time away. I recently got the chance to catch up with a couple of these friends and it was like no time had passed. We fell right back into a comfortable rhythm, sharing our lives and deepest thoughts and feelings. We could have sat and chatted for days but eventually the pull of our lives meant we had to part with promises to ‘catch up again soon!’ I hope this happens soon but the reality is it will probably be some time before we can make it happen again. In the meantime it’s social media and text messages to stay connected ❤️❤️
This post. 😩💕 Needing to be away from family and friends during isolation made me realize just how much I need them.
During the pandemic, a fellow mom who's daughter went to preschool with mine, reached out. We compared our pandemic prevention strategies and precautions and were on the same page. Friday's were our days: we would transparently describe our week to make sure we were comfortable then she'd come to our house with her daughter. Our girls would play while we drank our coffee and had much needed time to just be together as friends. She is the friend of a lifetime. Chosen family at this point. And our girls have a similar friendship. I tell her all the time that her reaching out saved me.
Connection is so important.❤️
I have a dear friend who, one year ago, was seeing her mother to end of her life. She had been caring for both her parents for several years, much of the time in another country. Both our moms have/had dementia and our email correspondence about all of it was epic and so important to both of us. She brought her mom back here for what ended up being the last few months of her life. And then her mom died. It was sad and hard and the very best thing that could have happened to both of them. Almost immediately we started seeing each other again in person. She is close to my husband, too and the three of us have spent more time together in the last year than we did for the 10 years preceding it. She and I will meet for lunch at noon and close the place down at 4:00, and then stand in the parking lot talking for another hour. I had no idea much I missed her actual physical presence in my life. My mother is still in the process of dying from Alzheimer's and my friend's support is such a gift. Reconnecting in person with this one friend has changed the color of my life. It is such a comfort to have her back.
Very thoughtfully written Amber. I'm an only child, as you are, but I was raised without Holllywood, parties or very much sociability. I've been alone most of my life, even when living with a man, so I do much better with it than most others. Still, Covid kicked my tentative ties to others to the curb; I lost friends to it, and because of it. At my age, people die much more frequently than they ever did before. People I really want to visit with are my best friend Bonz (you know her), and my kiddos, grands and great grands. I knew when moving to Canada it wouldn't make a difference in seeing them, and it hasn't. If I didn't go see them, rest assured I wouldn't see them, and I haven't. I miss them all dearly, but I have for many years, not just the past four. We are scattered to the four corners of this continent, quite literally. I hope to one day soon catch connecting flights over a month or so and visit all of them.
Love this! I was finishing up my “lonely” essay for Sunday Morning Records, when I read this and it really helped me understand my own loneliness a bit more. I was feeling very lonely writing about loneliness but your post reminded me that loneliness happens simultaneously with the loneliness of the people around you. It just takes an internal nudge to recognize your feelings in the other folks around you. We’re alone together. Thanks Amber.
Thank you so much for sharing this - I didn’t even realize how much I needed it 🫶 all of my life I have not only been extremely fortunate to have made deep connections with some of the most amazing women in the world, all of whom I am still friends with, but I also have been so lucky enough to always live close to at least one of them - now, due all of these friends, including myself, living in completely different states, plus COVID/children/lack of finances, I have only seen 2 of these friends (each once) in the last 7 years. And due to chronic debilitating migraines/pain, I rarely am able to see the one close friend of mine that I live near. These women are all my chosen family, the people who inspire me, motivate me, and feed my soul, make my life BETTER and it’s hard to even begin to articulate how deleterious it has been to my entire being not having them in my life for so long 💔 thanks to you, however, I am inspired and determined to make a friend reunion happen come hell or high water! Like you, i know that even a few days with these friends would refuel my soul/spirit, and I desperately need that right now, as im sure so many others do 💖🫶💖🫶💖🫶
I've also recently found myself totally engrossed with news reports and journal articles on this "growing epidemic" and have been spending more time in thought about how to heal, repair, and foster both new and old relationships in a lonely, "post-COVID" world.
I gave birth to my first daughter in Manhattan in April 2020, and I'm still processing the trauma--like most of the world, I assume.
During one of the most joyous times of our lives, the world was closed. The silence of the experience was deafening in our 500 square-foot apartment in Queens, and we--my husband and I--are still struggling to find our footing, not just in our new identities as parents, but also in a world that has increasingly become more and more closed--politically, socially, and emotionally.
I am hopeful. I do feel that those of us who continue to bravely express ourselves and give a voice to our loneliness will find what it is that makes us miraculous human beings: love, community, peace, joy, humility, and empathy.
Thank you for sharing ❤️
I’m grateful when a writer taps into something so deeply important and universal! The waves of emotion and yearning to go, and be with my dearest women friends was felt. thank you for this and all of your other work that puts a spotlight on vital issues.
I can relate to so much that you’ve shared. I truly did not leave my house in the daytime during the pandemic. Sightings of me by others were incredibly rare. I was slowly yet surely becoming a hermit. And I worried a little that I might be getting too comfortable in this new way of being. I was and still am fortunate to work remotely. So work wasn’t an issue and I was on video conference meetings all day every day. I wasn’t seeing my family as I didn’t risk getting my mom or anyone else sick. In actuality, I am the one who is immunocompromised so maybe that’s why I truly isolated as a protection for myself as well as others.
Eventually I braced leaving the house to get some sunshine and lo and behold what awaited me outside? My sweet neighbors. A husband and wife who got married the year I was born. They are empty nesters so I think when they saw me it reminded them of their daughters. So here we are, in our masks, chatting about how we never see each other. Them wondering if I was okay. Texting me but never seeing me. We’d stay outside literally talking from a distance for 45 to 60 minutes. It became a routine. I felt like they were sitting in the window because whenever I would come out to get to my car, one of them, usually the wife/mother would come out to her porch and chat with me about her growing up in Sicily and then moving to the United States as a child for 45 minutes. And then when I’d return from running my errands, the husband/father would be outside and his chats were usually upwards of 90 minutes. Often about his 95 year old brother who raised him and he wasn’t able to visit him in his skilled nursing facility due to the pandemic. I recognized that they each needed this connection and I was grateful they were each pulling me out of my isolation. Again I had gotten too comfortable in it.
These interactions with my neighbors helped me realize I had this incredible unrecognized belonging to connect with my friends. My sister-friends. So seeing you four together in the same space, I totally get that. My friendships run 20 to 40 years long. From childhood friends to high school friends to college friends to coworkers who became family when I experienced health issues for a solid 10 years, taking turns cooking and caring for me during my time of need 15 years ago. There’s nothing like a beautiful sisterhood to center you. Celebrating each other. Crying together. Lifting each other up. Laughing about nothing and everything.
I am an introvert who truly enjoys her alone time which is why I got worried during the pandemic as I didn’t want to fully embrace that side of me. I want to remain open to gathering my friends and family together, celebrating and loving on each other. Even if I am not feeling that loneliness because I cherish my alone time, I know that’s rare and being with loved ones near and far is a priceless gift that we should cherish. I now make more of an effort to plan special quality time together with my groups of special sister-friends. Trying to get back to my pre-pandemic lead organizer of small group friend and family gatherings.
Thank you for sharing your life journeys with us.
Hi, Amber! I'm from Spain, and I'm in my mid 20s, and even though I am younger than you, I can totally relate to everything you've said: I met most of my friends in different periods of my life (e. g. studying abroad, doing a Master's Degree in another town) and now they're all scattered all over Spain or the world (they're either from another countries or just move abroad to build their lives). Some of them live close to me, but, since we're all busy, we don't really see each other. Recently, I've managed to reunite with friends I hadn't seen in a long, long time.... and it's like the connection and the love were still there, nothing had changed!! I hope we all get to feel less alone soon! Thank you for sharing your thoughts (and an insight of such a magical bond) with us <3
I don't have many friends who are around my age, but there's a person very dear to me: she's one of my cousins, my semi-confidante, and like a big sis for me (she's only nine months older than me). We also share a love of arts (she's a kids music teacher and a dancer. And i'm a painter, although my major's not art, it's English).
Yes, i can relate deeply to that loneliness epidemic. When the COVID pandemic started, i was depressed. And whenever i heard that one of my family members has covid, i would wallow in the thought of losing that person (what if she dies and i'm not able to say goodbye to her ? These types of questions). Instead of focusing on myself, i focused on others. Now, i'm not as depressed as before, but there are times when i feel disconnected from others, even from my parents.
I support this. Let me know how i can help.
Yes, there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. I have always need more alone time than most people I know, but the loneliness since my husband died 2.5 years ago is unrelenting. Strangely enough, it's in my darkest moments that I feel closer to him, so I don't fight it. That's what I'm writing about on Substack. I never knew someone's absences could fill up so much space.
During the early days of Covid, when I was home with my newborn, my newish (at the time) friend who lives around the corner would check in on me, let me know when she was running to the store to see if I needed anything, leave food on my porch and hosted my family for socially distanced hangs in her backyard when weather permitted. It was life-giving to have someone show up for me that way when I was so isolated and lonely. Not long after, an old friend who’d been living out of the country moved back to town and bought a house two minutes from us and her son and my son have become best buddies. Another former co-worker and dear friend lives just down the road and we continue to go for “walk + talks” at the park together. Eventually, all four of us connected, and now we have a bookclub. ☺️ When I tell you these women sustained me and brought me back from the brink after the height of the pandemic, I am not exaggerating. I feel so grateful for their friendship and to have such lovely women living so close (many of my friends no longer live in the city). It’s incredible how gathering regularly with friends again has improved my mental health. In-person connection is SO vital. ❤️