This is the third episode in the "Formidable Fridays" series where we explore the difficult topic of loneliness. Each of us will experience profound loneliness at some point in our lives. The weight of it can feel stifling and the shame of it, silencing. Historians, anthropologists, and scientists have studied loneliness and it's causes for thousands of years. It's a pain we all share, especially post-pandemic as we navigate new social structures and expectations. But is there a practical antidote in a world filled with impractical struggles?  

As mentioned in the episode:

• “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” -Carl Jung
• “The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.” -Charlotte Bronte
• “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” -Maya Angelou
• “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” -Kurt Vonnegut
• “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” -Mother Theresa
• “When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.” -Audrey Hepburn
• “The History of Loneliness” by Jill Lepore published in The New Yorker (April 2020)
• “Where loneliness comes from” by Katy Waldman published in The New Yorker (July 2021)
• “The beauty of being a misfit” by Lidia Yuknavitch at TED2016
• “Structure and function of the human insula” by Lucina Q. Uddin, Jason S. Nomi, Benjamin Hebert-Seropian, Jimmy Ghaziri, and Olivier Boucher published on NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information)

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