The loneliness of the long distance writer

Smells Like Team Spirit: Part 3

The third part in this mini series that has been inspired by my experience of travelling to Baku to support my daughter in a gymnastics competition, is all about community and connection - things which sit at the heart of my writing, and which I view as fundamental anchors in our wellbeing. My book, Breaking Waves, is centred around these core ideas, and I notice how increasingly important they become as we get older.

Alone doesn’t always equal lonely

We read a lot about loneliness in the press, particularly amidst the ageing population, but it doesn’t take being bereaved or living alone to feel lonely. I live in a very busy house, I have two children, am married and am probably someone who others perceive to have lots of friends. I am an extrovert in that I get energy from being around other people, I am sociable (when chronic illness permits), and I am definitely one of life’s optimists, but when loneliness strikes, which of course it does, it can be brutal.

Photo by Kasia on Unsplash

I remember my mum’s shock one time when I told her how lonely I felt. She is also a very gregarious and outgoing individual, but is widowed, has lost a child, and lives on her own. I know she struggles with loneliness, and we welcome her to our house several times a week to guard against that (and because she’s great company). When I told her how desperately lonely I feel sometimes, she found it hard to understand - how can I be lonely in a house full of people? How can I be lonely when I’m always rushing around doing things? My #facebooklife is full of smiles and meetups…

Time for a couple of simple converse truths:

• being alone does not necessarily equate to loneliness

• being surrounded by others does not mean you are not lonely

I wrote this in response to

Poorna Bell

’s brilliant article ‘In the restful houses of women who live alone’

“I have never felt lonelier than within my marriage when we were having difficulties (which have now thankfully passed). I carry the ‘mental load’ for my family of 4 and hold the enormous emotional space required to encompass teenage daughters and stressed and stretched adult lives. My older sister lives alone, with her 3 cats, and her home is indeed an oasis of calm and tranquility. Her black cherry yoghurt never goes missing. No one uses the last teabag. She is not lonely, she is deeply content.”

This is clearly not to say that people who live alone don’t also experience loneliness, but more to express how we ALL do, no matter our circumstance, and that is why community and connection is so critical. When my marriage was going to shit, it was the loneliest I have ever felt. Existing alongside someone you have lost connection with is a perpetual reminder of how deeply alone you are in your feelings, and you are also not in a position to go out and forge a new connection. Somehow at the point it felt most hopeless, my husband and I found our way again (with the help of a lot of couples counselling) and are now better than ever, but I know those feelings so well. Perhaps I’ll talk more about that whole episode another time.

Having done a bit of googling around definitions of loneliness - I have come across descriptions such as ‘social pain’ or ‘an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation’. Even those descriptors make me feel sad, but that really encapsulates it - feeling isolated - which can occur even within the most apparently busy and vibrant surroundings.

Shared experience and shared understanding

I think that one of the key factors to guard against loneliness, is to connect with others who have a shared understanding of your way of being, how you live your life, and your experiences.

In the aftermath of a recent very tricky mental health crisis, I took myself down to the lake, somewhere I definitely find community and connection, and I saw one of my closest friends having a chat with another woman. They have worked together for years, brought up their kids together, and now meet at the lake every Thursday. When I head down for my regular Thursday dip, I always see them chatting post-swim over a cuppa. By the time I get out of the water they are normally heading home. Seeing them together made me realise the beauty of regular and consistent connection, yet I also felt a stirring of sadness as I realised that I didn’t really have this in my life as a writer.

I spoke to my friend about it, how I miss that regularity of contact with people since coming out of the traditional workplace. How although I do find the most wonderful community at the lake, I no longer have regular and consistent touchpoints. Writing is something I do out in my garden shed on my own, there is no one to share the minutiae of daily life with, to discuss what we watched on TV last night, what films we’ve seen, or how much our families are pissing us off. She really understood - ‘you’re missing shared experience’.

Yes, I thought, that’s it. In my writing life, I don’t have shared experience. No one is sitting next to me with the same boss, preparing for the same meeting, slagging off HR or chugging cheap fizz at the Christmas party. It’s a party for one, but it doesn’t need to be a pity party. Some paths we do take alone, so there isn’t shared experience, but there is something else…

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

At a recent retreat with

Clover Stroud

we talked quite a lot about grief, and the individual nature of it. How walking through our grief is a lonely path. Whilst I agree that it is a very individual experience and it can feel very isolating, there is also something incredibly connecting within it. I have certainly found a kinship amongst others who have experienced grief. When I was in my thirties it was quite a small club, now that I’m in my fifties, we are everywhere. This is not about shared experience - as no two experiences of grief are the same, not even of the same bereavement, but there is a shared understanding. That is where the magic lies.

I have found myself extraordinarily connected to two women I’ve met in recent years who lost a brother. What is peculiar, is how we came to it within seconds of meeting each other - how does that happen? I don’t talk about my brother’s death daily or even weekly any more. Perhaps once a month or less? So how did we get there so quickly? One woman I met on a skiing holiday, and as we shuffled down to the bus stop in our moon boots having just met for the first time, we made a connection that made us both cry almost instantly, but in the best possible way.

I experienced this again more recently with a gym mum whose son is in Taz’s gym team - we share a fundamental knowing, and within that there is a deep feeling of love and support. All of us experienced the death of a brother in very different ways and at different stages of life, but all at an age where it was too young and in tragic circumstances. There is a shared understanding that helps us feel less alone.

In order to open ourselves up to these opportunities for shared experience and shared understanding, I got to thinking about where else we find our community and connection. Hmm…

The school gates and gym moms

Well if that isn’t a title to fill you with school girl stomach churn, I don’t know what is.

I hated the ‘school gates’ dynamic. It was a mire of ‘Motherland’ caricatures, and an almost primal display of facades and neuroses that a social anthropologist could have a field day with. Where I saw cliques, snootiness and resentment, no doubt others were just managing their own fears and anxieties. Where we all just probably wanted to be liked and to fit in, we somehow viewed each other as threats, or a representation of our own failings. Strangers forced into friendships based on needing help (in a social construct where asking for help can feel gut wrenchingly difficult). Human nature enticing us into unhealthy comparisons, whether that be about our children, our status, our clothes, our jobs… ugh it still makes me shudder.

I know that as a full time working mum who would only attend sporadically and quite often in a suit and crazy high heels (how did I ever wear them?!), I was perceived as a ‘Super Mum’, one of those ‘who had it all’, when I was existing in a beyond stressful scenario, and all I really wanted was someone to give me a hug and invite me over for a cup of tea.

Photo by Elias Hampp on Unsplash

At the school gates I did not have ‘shared experience’ with the vast majority of mums, as most of them had substantial time out of the workplace and weren’t the breadwinners. And for the few of us that were, well we never saw each other because…well…we were rarely actually at the school gates. When I finally had the breakdown that ultimately led to me being medically retired from the career that I loved, and subsequently having to sell our house, I was suddenly present at the post drop-off coffee mornings. I’ll never forget one woman sidling over to me saying ‘oh have the wheels finally fallen off?’ with thinly disguised glee. Some sisterhood.

That’s not to say I didn’t have friends at that time, I did, but those relationships seemed to evaporate as our children headed towards secondary school. Now I know that that’s ok, as there is a time and a place for certain connections in our lives…but back then I would wistfully look at others posting on Facebook about their ‘mum’s club’ weekends away, gleefully jumping into swimming pools and sipping champagne together. I couldn’t help but ponder why I never really fitted in.

In recent years, however, I have found the community I didn’t quite grasp at the school gates, amongst the gymnastics parents. Something quite wonderful has happened and it has evolved out of the extraordinary experiences we share, which I wrote about in the first part of this short series:

As I said in this piece:

“Having missed out on the whole school gates malarkey (await forthcoming post on community and connection), the circle of friends we have made through gymnastics over the last couple of years in particular has been phenomenal. What I love so much about TeamGym as a sport, is that we as parents are not in competition with each other because our gymnasts are not in competition with each other. There may be a bit of internal vying for ‘placing’ or ‘ranking’ on the apparatus, or who carries the flag, but the gymnasts really are all in it together, and so are we.”

Although we all live quite spread out and have varying social constructs, interests, work lives and family dynamics, we are bonded by the shared experience of being ‘gym moms’…and dads! As a group we experience highs and lows together, we have travelled from Southampton to Newcastle (several times), from Venice to Baku and have potentially many more adventures ahead. I think what makes it so special, is not just the shared experience of the travels, training, meet ups and the competitions, but also that shared understanding of the emotional, financial and familial impact of our peculiar circumstance. It makes for a strong connection indeed.

It can take a long while to find, and God knows I felt on the periphery of other groups for so long, but then sometimes, it all just falls into place when you least expect.

Take me to Church? Or perhaps work..

When I studied my postgrad in Coaching Psychology, we had a lot of discourse as to whether the ‘workplace’ was the new ‘church’, in the sense that it was where we gathered regularly, found a sense of belonging and purpose, gained a strong identity and formed a community. This resonated very strongly with me back then, in the pre-Covid days. I’m sure I wrote a stunningly brilliant essay on it at the time.

I definitely had some very strong work relationships over the years. [There was one vicious episode of workplace bullying that nearly finished me off altogether (I’m almost ready to write about that - thank you

Sue Reed

for inspiring me with courage with your writing), but on the whole, I found such wonderful friends there]. Being an air traffic controller and inhabiting quite a unique world combining shift work, public safety, intense training and hyper focus gave us an enormous sense of shared understanding and connection.

Working in a highly male dominated industry, I gained a work ‘husband’ (or three - I was delightfully slutty with it). Men who I became true friends with, who I worked with and wept with. We shared emotions, fears, hopes and anxieties, holding each other up when needed. I remember arriving in my entirely male department of the Civil Aviation Authority one day on the point of fainting and needing new underwear and tights because I was suffering ‘random uterine bleeding’. My work husband scooped me up and looked after me. As a man who had nursed his wife through cancer until her death, he took me into the kitchen and said ‘nothing fazes me, I’ll take care of work, you need to look after yourself’ as he put me in a taxi home chaperoned by another work colleague. I encountered such a lot of kindness.

Leaving a ‘traditional’ workplace has probably been the thing that has taken me longest to adapt to in these past few years, because of that loss of community and connection. It’s been a huge adjustment going from a busy, vibrant and sometimes gloriously chaotic office environment to a quiet room alone in my house. This is where the loneliness really bites.

I miss my work bestie and our scurried meetings and conflabs as we rushed from one crisis management scenario to another. I miss the incredible woman I sat next to for two years, and how our souls and minds connected in such a way that we only had to look at each other to sense what needed to happen next. (I haven’t seen her once since the day I left..) I miss chatting about what we watched on TV last night, what films we’ve seen, or how much our families are pissing us off… I have felt bereft, and have had to grieve that loss, and consider where and how I can regain the human contact that nourishes my soul.

As a lapsed Catholic who has been serially dismayed by the failings of said institution, there aren’t many things that would get me back into an actual church, but if it would be one thing, it would be community. In a recent interview about the upcoming Oscar-tipped film ‘Conclave’, Stanly Tucci quotes:

“I think that this sense of camaraderie and community is something we all long for and there’s no question that the church does that.”

Undeniably millions of people also feel connected through their shared faith and belief structures, so maybe church is the new church? Who knows…

So what have I done to feel less alone?

Firstly, I have acknowledged that the loss of my former workplace environment (notwithstanding the actual job and the salary) was deserving of a grieving process, and I have allowed this to happen. While the outcome has turned out to be hugely positive in the long run in that I’ve written a book and can live in a manner much more compatible with my chronic illness, the key to moving forwards emotionally has been acceptance and understanding of what I miss the most: people. I need daytime company (at least some of the time)!

For me, these are things that I have put in place:

• Going to the lake to swim twice a week - here there may be familiar faces and new faces, but there is always a friendly face. It’s almost impossible to experience cold water swimming without feeling a deep empathetic connection with the person shivering beside you.

• Joining a crochet group - this has been a revelation. I went along because my sister goes, and I don’t see as much of her as I’d like since we closed the coaching business we ran together. I have met such a kind hearted group of women there, it makes my heart sing for two hours a week. With tea and biscuits nestled on the table amidst colourful balls of wool, we chit chat, learn, create and listen to rock music in the background. It’s just perfect. I don’t know the people there well yet, but I get a warm, fuzzy feeling every time I walk in, and in itself, the crochet is company for me at home, as I am too engrossed to feel lonely when I get into that creative space.

• Picking up the phone. When I was a teenager and into my twenties, I would spend HOURS on the phone to my friends, every single evening. Having kids and the dawn of the smartphone put paid to that entirely, but recently I have started phoning people again, and it’s a joy. A way of connecting far beyond the typed brevity of a flurry of WhatsApp messages. It’s too easy to think we’ll be bothering someone if we phone, or they won’t have time to talk, but I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. There’s nothing quite like actually hearing someone’s laughter.

• Connecting with other writers - this is where Substack is GOLD. My twice weekly writing group with

  Suzy Walker
  Heart Leap
  Club is a place where I have made true friends. People I have met in person, that I speak to on the phone, have virtual coffees with. It’s become an intrinsic part of my work ‘week’, and a regular touchpoint. Additionally I’ve been able to attend Substack writers meet-ups, like the one recently hosted by the brilliant
  Amy I Beeson
  which opened up so much common ground between us:

  And just this very weekend, I joined the

  London Writers' Salon
  #24hourwritingsprint and found myself in a Zoom room with writers from across the world, sharing our writing goals, hopes and dreams. These things are out there for us all.

• Writing Lemon Soul. When I’m writing these words, I’m thinking about all of you: those that regularly engage, those that pop up with the occasional ‘hi!’, those that quietly surf, and those that may never have come across my writing before, but just might hit on a piece at a time they really need to read it. Here, creating this, I feel deeply connected - to you. For this, I am truly grateful 🫶

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Today, I particularly hope this resonates with you if you are feeling lonely, and perhaps just knowing that we all feel this at times will help in its own way. This is most definitely a shared experience, and I’d love to chat with you about how you manage it.

Please do leave comments as always, but I’m also going to try a little experiment and run a chat thread which may create a more flowing conversation on this subject. Somewhere we can just gather for a while on a Sunday morning or evening wherever you are in the world, and ongoing. It would be so great to see you there.

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As always,

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xx

My first book, Breaking Waves, is coming out March 2025 and is currently available for pre-order. If you want to learn more about the book publication process (what it’s REALLY like) then you can read all about that on my dedicated Book Deal Diaries series. This includes the ultimate VIDEO MASTERCLASS ‘From Book Inception to Book Deal Moment’. Paid subscribers have access to all of it.

You can pre-order BREAKING WAVES here: