Advice column #20: How to keep showing up

This month, the advice columnist answers a question about loneliness and finding new connections.

And, a note to readers: This question (and, therefore, my answer) will briefly discuss suicide. This discussion is neither detailed nor extensive, but it is very much a part of this advice column. Remember to take care of yourselves in whatever way(s) you need, and engage at the level that is right for you. You can find more resources, including suicide hotlines, on our website here.

Q: As I am ageing (over 35+ years old), I am more aware of the physical health risks that come with being an Estranged Adult Child. I experience extreme Social Deprivation, I can spend weeks or months without having an emotional connective conversation with another adult human outside my home, except for my weekly therapy appointment. Since I do not have reliable and consistent local/offline friends to text, talk, or see me at the very least 1x a week, how do I make peace with the reality that I will be someday, if I am blessed, an elder in their 80's or 90's without any reliable and consistent human connection? What can I do now to prevent elder suicide regarding Social Deprivation and being an Estranged Adult Child?

A: Oh, friend,

The despair is radiating off of the page in this letter. 

So I don’t want to be the person who shows up with a chipper smile and tells you: “Don’t worry, it’s easy to make new friends when you’re lonely!” As my memory serves, that kind of platitude didn’t work that well in kindergarten and I doubt it’ll work much better now.

So, instead — if you don’t mind — I’d like to tell you a quick story about a cherished friend of mine, that I think might offer a couple new ways of thinking about your situation.

The first few times I bumped into ‘Christine,’ we met by happenstance, and wound up making small talk about the weather and the curling world championships. But she had a spectacular laugh and some great stories, and the more we kept talking, the more we had to talk about. I would bring my knitting to work on while we chatted; she said it reminded her of how her mother used to knit, though the closest she ever came to learning the craft was making accidental Cat’s Cradles out of the wool. She told me about her years of work in the postal service; I told her about the semester I spent working in my university’s mail room. I introduced her to my partner; she introduced me to her daughter. Last summer, her running commentary on each of the Olympic sports as we watched them on TV was one of my highlights of the Games.

Also, Christine was more than 50 years my senior. 

When my grandma-by-choice moved into a care home last year, ‘Christine’ was one of the people who sat at her table in the dining hall, so I kept running into her whenever I came to visit. As these once- or twice-weekly conversations started to add up over the weeks and months, we went from strangers to acquaintances to friends.

‘Christine’ passed away a couple of months ago, at nearly 90 years old, after a vibrant life lived fully and joyfully right to the end: I miss her, and her memory is a blessing (and I’ve still got the magazine sitting on my desk that I had been planning to bring her after we’d talked about what we were reading, in what would turn out to be our last conversation - it reminds me fondly of her). 

And I think she would be proud to know that one of the most important lessons she taught me is that, as long as you are alive and in (physical and/or virtual) places where other people also exist, as you bump up against one another, there is the chance of making a human connection. Each of those connections has the chance to take root and keep growing into something beautiful.

To be fair, this is a bit of a game of chance — there’s no guarantee that any given stranger you meet will have anything in common with you, or will have a personality that clicks well with yours, or will be in a position in their own life that would be compatible with being a good friend to you in this moment.

But when you think of it as a game of chance, you can play the odds: Sure, the outcome is never guaranteed, but there are ways to stack the deck in your favour. 

Consider —

The more people you spend time around, the more likely you are to interact with some of those people.

The more people you interact with, the more likely you are to have a shared pleasant/positive/engaging interaction with somebody. 

The more positive moments you share with somebody, the more likely you both are to think of each other as good, caring, friendly people who are generally nice to spend time around.

The more that people enjoy spending time with each other, the more likely they are to (when possible) seek each other out.

I know this sounds like an incredibly basic formula.

But in my experience, one of the awful paradoxes of being lonely and disconnected and outside of community is that it comes with this desperate, all-consuming hunger for deep, sustained, foundational relationships with other people — the ‘surface-level’ can feel painfully, almost insultingly insufficient. 

But without showing up at that ‘surface level,’ and doing that over and over and over again, you don’t get the chance to make those deeper connections. 

In my own life, since the start of this year, I have had a reminder programmed in my phone to prompt me to “say something nice to a friend/loved one/colleague/acquaintance” every day. (That doesn’t mean I wasn’t saying nice things to people around me before! I’d like to think, at least, I wasn’t being a total pill.) But the deliberate act of taking a moment out of my day, every day, to ask myself “who can I connect with in a good way?” has made a surprisingly big difference.

This daily ritual reminds me to look for opportunities to connect (whether with people in the same physical space as me, or whether I’m sending a text or a message on social media). It prompts me to look for moments and topics to connect with them about (‘I saw this and thought of you,’ ‘How is that thing you were working on going?’ ‘Can I ask for your advice about something? I really trust your opinion on this topic,’ ‘Ooh, let me send you this short story I just read, I think you’ll love it.’). 

I have found my deepest and most cherished relationships becoming stronger because of this little practice, and friendships and acquaintances that were once very surface-level becoming much stronger and more fulfilling too. 

And, see, that’s not a lesson I was ever taught as a kid — making friends did not come naturally to me as a young person. Also, my family of origin made a real point of letting me know that I’d never have any chance at a better relationship with anybody else in the world than what I had with them, so I’d better buck up and be grateful, or I’d wind up with nothing and nobody at all. 

Even when I left, those lessons stuck with me. For a long time, I really believed that because I had walked away from a family who would have allowed me to stay (despite everything about me; and they made that very clear it would have been ‘allowed’ and ‘despite,’ not ‘wanted’ and ‘because’), I had no right to take up space in anybody else’s life. 

And that, I know now, was nonsense.

Taking up space in one another’s lives; causing some friction as we brush up against one another; lifting others up when we can and reaching out to be caught when we need it — that is not asking too much, it’s not being too much; this is what it means to be in community.

And you are for from alone in your search for deeper connections: The more we speak up, and show up, and reach out, the more we help each other find the way.

I know that ageing as an estranged adult child is a concern for you — you mention being over 35 years old, and looking ahead to what your life might be like in your 80s and 90s. And while that chapter of your life is approaching and will continue to approach, since time only ever goes forward, that is still decades in your future. So much can change in a matter of decades. Even for people who are not and have never been estranged from their families of origin, getting older often means losing parents and other relatives, as well as friends and loved ones, as they become elderly or get sick and eventually die. 

You are absolutely right that the issue of loneliness among seniors and elders is a real problem with serious, significant and painful effects. But it is also a well-known problem — which means that lots of people, all over the world, are putting together programs and resources to help address it. 

I would encourage you to look up ‘activities for seniors,’ ‘55+ events,’ ‘adult book clubs,’ etc. in your area. If you live near a university, odds are they probably run some programming for seniors — everything from (possibly) the chance to audit classes for free if you are over a certain age, to research projects focused on seniors’ physical and mental well-being.

If you are too young to join the group as a participant right now, they might have you as a volunteer! I know for my own self, the idea of ageing and becoming more dependent on others and being lonely as an elderly person has become a lot less frightening since I started spending more time at local care homes, getting to know the residents there. If I want to live in a world where fewer elders are lonely and isolated, I can be a part of creating that world today, and trust that there are other people who will pick up the torch tomorrow.

In the meantime — I am really glad to hear that you’ve been speaking to a therapist about what you’re going through, and I hope that has and will continue to be helpful for you. Please do talk to your therapist about your concerns about suicide in the future, and let your therapist know right away if your thoughts about ‘I am worried about what my life will be like, and whether I will want to continue living it, someday when I am older' become more specific and focused on the here and now: The world is better for having you in it, and your life and presence is an irreplaceable thread in the fabric of this time and place. 

If you are interested in more connections and conversations with people who might share some of your experiences around family estrangement, I would invite you to join the Together Estranged monthly support groups here, as one starting point.

I’d also really encourage you to look for support groups and discussion groups in your own area, if you want to build more of these face-to-face discussions into your life.

I also do want to make sure I answer your question exactly as you wrote it: What will you do if, someday, you do become an elder without any reliable and consistent human connection after all?

For all those years — all those days, all those hours — you will have, whether shared or alone: I think the project is to fill them with as much good as you can, as best you can, for as long as you can. That's the same project we all have, after all, for all the rest of our lives.

People are important, but there are so many ways to become more connected and interwoven with the world that don’t put the ‘human-to-human’ connection first. Maybe you go about it by spending time in your neighbourhood, learning about the history and the art and the languages and the ecology of this place. Maybe it’s by delving deep into a passion project, or starting to study a new subject. I do think the odds are pretty good that, if you embark on a journey like this, you will meet other like-minded people along the way and come into community with them.

So, in parting, I would offer you a challenge: Try to learn one new fact every day about the place where you live, the people around you, or the communities, stories and experiences — near or far, in person or through virtual spaces — you share.

I’ll get us started. You and I don’t know each other beyond your question and my answer here, but I know we are both connected to the estrangement community. And one new fact about me is that, every year, I celebrate my ‘estrangement-versary’ (the day I left my family of origin) by baking a pie and sharing it with whoever might be around and want a slice. This year’s celebration pie was apple-blackcurrant, my best one yet.

That one’s on me. Next one’s on you.

Wishing you all the best,

Hila

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Hila (any pronouns) is the Advice Columnist for the Together Estranged Newsletter. They have been happily estranged for a number of years, and now live with their chosen family and beloved, silly dog in rural Canada. They have a background in mental health, peer support, writing and journalism. Outside of work, Hila can be found recreating desserts from The Great British Bake Off, running on the beautiful trails near their home, singing show tunes, and learning to knit.

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Please Note: The peer to peer Advice Columnist is not a licensed mental health professional; this is not medical advice. If you are in crisis or you think you may have an emergency, please go to your local urgent care center to talk to a professional counselor.

The views and opinions expressed by Advice Columnists are those of the Advice Columnists and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Together Estranged.