On Loneliness, Friendship and Radical Compassion

Loneliness is a silent epidemic, a poverty of presence in a world so loud and so busy. Let's change that.

So many in the world are experiencing a different kind of poverty — crippling loneliness.

Loneliness is a silent epidemic, a poverty of presence in a world so loud and so busy.

Humans are made for connection. Something inside of us withers when we don’t have it.

I am not talking about the fast-food, shallow, cheap or purely pleasurable connection. This is about a meaningful, selfless, compassionate connection in which two souls dance in friendship.

I have decided to start working with archetypes in my personal life and in my writing. Recently, I have been guided to the Orphan archetype and looked at antidotes to the orphan’s pain, which is belonging. Friendship.

But we don’t want to belong to just anything that shows up at our doorstep. That’s the thinking that gets the orphan in trouble. We orphans can act out of our wounds and will often enter into any contract to belong. So we heal, alone. We find our worth in the safety of solitude. But only for a time.

The Orphan as an archetype is the one who has been cast out, abandoned or forgotten. She is also a mirror of humanity’s greatest wound, and because of this, she is also its greatest potential. From her wounds, she knows what the world needs to heal because it is what she needs to heal — good friends.

This led me to explore what it means to be a good friend and to have good friends.

As I have walked away from nearly everything that doesn’t seek to honor my humanity, my inner light, I have found myself struggling with profound loneliness. Don’t get me wrong, I know how to be alone. I even like being alone (in healthy doses). I know the beauty of sacred solitude, but I also know that I, as a human, was built for connection.

So, as I hover in the darkness of what once was and what is coming, leaving old patterns and people behind to create space for true connection with friends and work, the Orphan resonates deeply with me.

Working with this archetype, I realize that my soul’s ache echoes the aching of the world, the lack of belonging and safety.

Here is the hope. If so many of us are feeling separated from others and ourselves, then from that pain, we know what we want to build. Because so many of us feel the ache of exile, we have what it takes to guide others back home to each other and themselves. Our pain becomes our newfound purpose.

As so many people walk away from jobs, partners and friendships that are no longer aligned with their heart-led journeys of healing, they, too, walk into the liminal space of solitude. No longer in an office, no more visits in the break room or conference room with colleagues, fewer last-minute lunches with the office bestie, and no longer waking up next to your former partner. But most importantly, fewer shallow outings with friends and coworkers who still dwell in the old ways of competition, fear and utilitarian-based connections.

As a devoted self-advocate, this has been my path for the last few years, but the last few threads were severed just this past year, and the solitude can feel bone-chilling at times. Yes, I have been vulnerable and shared with my friends what I am walking through, but so many are busy, including me.

Yes, I am busy with the million isolating tasks of being a single mother, homeowner, and entrepreneur. Plus, I know I have to learn to be super comfortable in this desert as I traverse into the sanctuary of self. I am here for a reason: to find her, to get to know her, to love her deeper than any other ever has. Just because it is the right path doesn’t mean it is easy or comfortable. I still need my friends.

For these reasons, those waking up to their lives and the world beyond the veil of illusion can struggle with loneliness. They know how to be alone, and they don’t let the fear of being alone keep them in inequitable relationships that don’t honor them.

They are the cycle breakers. The light holders. The ones who said “no more” to pain disguised as love, to systems dressed as safety, to careers that praised productivity but starved the soul. Soon, the whole world will be here as we walk away from the old and begin to build the new.

And those who feel the ache of loneliness most often carry the deepest hearts.

While solitude can be a sanctuary, prolonged isolation from a wounded space creates a deeper wound; our reaction to our trauma can further traumatize us. I heard a TED Talk once about addiction, and how the opposite of addiction is not sobriety; it’s connection. It is often our wounded response to isolation.

Until someone has walked alone for a while, it is hard to imagine the soul-itching unrest that comes in that silence. It is not the path for the faint-hearted.

We can do better. We must do better. I can do better. The world is struggling more than ever right now, and that, in part, has to do with feeling orphaned in every capacity — we have long been orphaned by our government, by our unhealthy workplaces, by our healthcare systems and by partners not willing to do the work or heal, and some of us, by wounded and neglectful parents when we were kids.

The solution lies in being a good friend.

I recently realized that we can’t really be good friends without compassion, and we can’t have compassion if we are not good friends. The two are inextricably bound.

But so much gets in the way of our ability to show up for each other: work, parenting, adulting. I have even noticed a trend of self-care taken to extremes, which creates a selfishness that blocks us from showing up for others.

To be a true friend is to witness the soul of another without flinching. To be a true friend is to hold sacred space for someone else’s becoming, especially when that becoming is messy, slow or invisible to the world.

Compassion in friendship is not performative. It is not transactional. It is the fierce resolve to stay. To stay even when someone’s light is dimmed, when their stories feel repetitive, when their wounds are louder than their laughter, for even that is temporary.

From friendships and connections, community is born, and this is needed more than ever. Compassion is how we create change. Compassion is the foundation of activism. Compassion is love.

The word “compassion” comes from the Latin compati, which means “to suffer with.”

It is not pity.
It is not sympathy from afar.
It is not a performative.

True compassion is the willingness to enter into the sacred space of another’s pain without needing to fix, control or flee. Compassion is presence. And there are so many creative ways we can be present.

In its deepest form, compassion is not merely an emotion—it is a state of union, an energetic exchange. We slip into understanding what another may be enduring, and we want to help create change around that.

Our community, our evolution toward something better, depends on this thoughtful and selfless kindness.

But are we listening? Can we hear them? Those who suffer alone are often quiet.

I once read a Buddhist principle that to awaken, to ascend and evolve means to be a good friend.

"Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.” This is what the Buddha said to his devoted attendant, Ānanda. He didn’t say friendship was part of it, he said it was the whole of it.

Friendship is love embodied.

How we show up as friends can echo our capacity for showing up for ourselves, and vice versa. How we show up in a relationship is how we show up in the office (look up Esther Perel’s research on this). Very few things in life are as compartmentalized as we think.

Most people are still learning to tolerate discomfort, even their own. So when someone we love suffers, some of us panic, deflect, disappear or offer shallow reassurances, not because we do not care but because we do not know how. We have not yet gone deep enough into our own suffering to hold theirs.

No, those who suffer are not your responsibility. No, they don’t need you to save them. But they do need authentic connection and embodied love as much as you do.

Those of us who are privileged to have the aligned partner, the loving and available parents, a healthy friend group, all of which I would argue are a form of wealth beyond measure, could make little donations to those suffering the poverty of loneliness. This is not an original thought; a dear friend of mine who experiences such wealth realized this is a way she can give back to the world. It is her form of activism.

Giving doesn’t always have to come in the form of money or volunteering for some distant organization. It can mean showing up for the friend sitting right across from you at the coffee shop or the loves in your group chat.

I had a family member who volunteered at a center for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) several times a week, but they never tended to my older brother, who suffers with IDD and so often suffers alone in his apartment. My son and I take him to dinner and to my son’s sports games when we can, and he has a lovely friend who walks with him almost nightly, for which I am deeply grateful. My mother lives out of town, but she calls him regularly.

I think about how much more he needs than I do. I take him for a meal when I find myself alone on my couch, wondering what to watch on Netflix. I turn the TV off. I can do better. I pick him up and we go to a local Mexican food joint since we were kids together, where he celebrated his 11th birthday decades ago.

When I am too wrapped up in the pain of my loneliness, chasing my tail for self-willed fixes and gripping my sanity too tightly, I tend to miss what someone like my brother may need. Get out of your head, Jocelyn. Surrender. Now look up.

There is all of this talk about activism and what we can do to save our world from crumbling. I think our biggest work is to build community, to uplift and support one another.

But that all must be fueled by love and radical and fierce compassion, otherwise it fades after one small attempt. Without love, it can turn into useful connections, networking for business, or worse, clicks.

Being out in the world right now feels weird. My tolerance for unhealthy or empty exchanges is lower than ever, yet my need for deep connection is growing. I no longer care about things of the material matrix like salaries, titles, social status, hot new restaurants or fashion finds.

As those words showed up on my screen, I realized I don’t think I ever cared for those things. I have always existed on the fringes in some capacity, with two toes dipped in the “normal.”

I find more comfort in my home than in most spaces “out there.” Every now and again, a member of the community will hold an event that feels aligned. It always saves me, like a well in the middle of a desert.

The solution to my suffering is the solution to the world’s suffering; it is to offer others what I need.

I have started asking myself: what can we do to support those who are raising kids alone, are alone because they walked away from a toxic partner to heal, walked away from a job that nearly killed them time and again because the workplace was not conducive to human thriving, or even surviving?

Yes, I understand people in solitude are learning how to be alone and often need that time alone. They are learning how to take care of themselves, but I can still reach out to them, include them, let them know about events I think they may enjoy (even if I can’t make it).

Let’s include them in our gatherings and outings when appropriate, and not out of pity, but because we love them, because they are lovely people.

Sure, they can create the community they want to belong to, but that is not as easy as some would think. Chances are, if they are in a period of extended solitude, they are probably healing from a lot of garbage. That very garbage is something they will no longer tolerate, so finding people who are loving, kind, compassionate, passionate, and purpose-driven like them, or at least the person they are becoming, is much harder than one may think.

We do not create real community by telling people to "manifest their tribe" while they're still bruised and breathless. Yes, to some degree, they are accountable for telling others what they are walking through. But you may not know how many times their hand was slapped for doing that in lesser heart-aligned spaces.

We orphans are learning how to ask for help.

These souls are often warriors in disguise because they had the courage to feel the hard stuff, and then follow up by doing the hard thing, which was leaving. Some say leaving is the easy way out. I disagree. Take it from an orphan.

Not everyone needs to know bone-deep loneliness to show compassion. But we live in a world that has forgotten how to notice. And noticing, really listening to our friends' pulses, is one of the most radical acts of love.

Noticing who’s gone quiet and asking how they’re really doing.

Making room at the table without waiting to be asked.

Choosing depth over ease in our friendships.

Getting curious about the ones we don’t understand.

Being willing to love people in their healing, not just when they're whole, (unless they consistently harm your spirit without accountability by projecting and acting out of their wounding unconsciously).

Inform them about events they may find community and interest in.

If you are busy with work, then invite them to cowork alongside you. I know several women in the community addressing loneliness by posting coworking hours in women-of-color-owned coffee shops, knocking out two forms of activism at once.

Men, can we talk about what you're all going through? Your loneliness is even more profound than that of women. Nobody taught you how to be vulnerable and ask for help. Let’s ask an ancient man what it means to have good friends.

Aristotle: The Ancient Man on Friendship

The first philosophy text I read was Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (350 BCE). I was 18. It’s the book that made me switch majors to philosophy. It amazed me that a man 2,500 years ago understood that friendship was not a luxury but essential to human thriving. “Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods,” he wrote.

His work is one of the first and most beautiful explorations of human connection in classical philosophy. He says there are three types of friendship, each rooted in a different foundation:

Friendships of Utility – These are based on what each person gains from the other. They are transactional. When the usefulness ends, so often does the bond.

Friendships of Pleasure – These are built on enjoyment, shared fun, or pleasant feelings. They can be beautiful and light, but they often fade when the pleasure wanes.

Friendships of the Good – This is the highest and rarest form. These are based on mutual virtue and admiration—a shared pursuit of goodness. In this sacred kind of friendship, each person loves the other for who they are, not for what they can provide. These friendships endure, are rooted in character and deeply nourishing to the soul.

Aristotle says, “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for those wish good will to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.”

True friends love each other because of who they are, not what they are or what they give. I would like to think the same is true for partners.

My loneliness was at a peak recently. I could not stop crying for days. It was a concatenation of things, one being that I feel like my son doesn’t need me in the same way now that he’s 13, which is totally normal. But still. The warmer weather is also calling me out, but the safety of my home whispers: stay.

So I reached out to a friend and told her what was going on, and ironically, why I couldn’t be around people and show up to her boyfriend’s birthday party — I had fallen into a hole and didn’t feel like I could be around strangers. She immediately called me and listened while she put on makeup in her car as the partygoers trickled into her house. She then told two other dear friends at the party, who texted me for three days afterward, checking on me, reminding me I am loved by them and others. These friends shocked my heart back to its normal pace.

They brought me out of the delusion of my fear and pain and back into my beautiful reality, which is that I have good friends.

You know who you are. Thank you. Thank you for being the friends I needed to move through this darker phase of solitude. Your kindness healed another layer of my heart.

Thank you to all the friends in my life who bring more life into my world, who make time, who sit with me for hours in the deepest of conversations. What is happiness if not shared?

Thank you to the people who organize events that bring people together to share life-giving conversations. You have inspired me to do the same.

Thank you to all of the leaders who are doing the hard healing work to lead with love.

Thank you for all of those suffering in silence and still holding on, because once you come out of this, and you will, you will have important work to do to heal this world’s biggest wound. We need you.

With love,

Jocelyn