The Real Reason For Loneliness and How Sidewalk Talk is Helping

I had an epiphany this week. 

I feel apprehensive sharing but it brought new focus to what was deep in my heart when I felt a call to listen on the sidewalk in 2014.

A Sidewalk Talk listener, Charlotte Faris, messaged me last week on messenger after our social justice listening circle. She said “Traci, I listened to this and I couldn’t stop thinking of you.” Here is what she sent.

THE POISON CONTAINS THE MEDICINE: ANCESTRAL HEALING & UNINTEGRATED TRAUMA W/ DARE SOHEI

While my hands were deep in soapy water, washing dishes, I listened to this interview with Dare.  And my breath hitched.  Then I had to sit down and stop what I was doing halfway through.  I felt 15 years of my own healing journey with therapists, teachers, and guides all come rushing in to fit on the pin of a head. 

Massive clarity crystalized.

This is why we are lonely.

This is why there is so much hatred.

This is why there is injustice and racism.

This is why the earth is sick.

This is why I started listening on sidewalks.

We are lonely not just because we are busy and living far away from family or caught up in social media all the time.  That is the surface level stuff.  Many folks, even with a great group of friends, feel lonely and they aren’t pathological. 

Why are we really lonely?

Humans, beautiful humans, in our early natural state were so deeply connected to our bodies.  If you heard the Sidewalk Talk podcast interview with Dr. Fay Bound Alberti she links a big uptick in loneliness and racism to that moment our society began to try to “tame” our wily bodies.

It is inside of our skin that we feel our humanity and aliveness.  When we aren’t able to sense our beating hearts, our sorrow, our joy as an embodied experience, we are vacant and that vacancy is lonely.

But the body isn’t the whole story. 

When we are in our best and most whole state, the human animal is so deeply connected to the earth that we feel our feet rooted in the soil, a part of the whole.  In community with each other and the trees, the soil, the animals, and the oceans, we thrive.  I am talking about more than loving a weekend camping trip but a much deeper “conversation” we used to have with the earth we no longer regularly have and it makes us lonely at our core – in our guts – in our soul.

And finally, one of the therapists I worked with years ago did her dissertation on the trauma we all feel when disconnected from our ancestors and our ancestral lands. 

At the time, I chalked this up to San Fran touchy feely stuff.  It didn’t resonate.  It does now.

In the podcast that Charlotte shared, Dare talks about attachment research which informs much of my work with psychotherapy clients.  But I have had some resistance, too for all the ways we blame mothers for psychological ills.  I wonder what would happen if attachment researchers observed indigenous people and watched how a baby isn’t just attached to the mother, that baby is also attached to the earth and her elders, her ancestors, through ritual.  Moreover, because the mother is rooted to her body, to the earth, attached to her ancestors, she also has more than enough to give to the baby.  It is one big elixir of belonging that makes the perfect alchemical soup for wholeness, health, and ‘not loneliness’.

How are our bodies, the earth, and our ancestors related to what we do at Sidewalk Talk?

Well the ah hah came when I realized “holy shit, I insisted on being outside because I wanted to be connected to the earth”.  I have often insisted on the sitting.  Now I get it. Sitting is an act of embodiment": to stop in the middle of a busy sidewalk and sit down with another human.  It is a total consciousness raising moment.  I don’t know that every time I have listened I was conscious of all this stuff, but viscerally I was.

Listening to strangers is where the big magic happens.  I remember feeling this deep when our “silos” or “echo chambers” took root.  Now election in the US has really broken me open. But I have had moments sitting out there on a stinky smelly sidewalk where the listening was sacred.  When we listen to strangers on the sidewalk, we / I touch into our ancestral roots.

So here we are, trying to figure out loneliness.  To succeed, we have to look at when we, as humans, belonged.  I don’t want to poo poo modernity.  I like having a washing machine and dishwasher.  But I don’t love sitting in front of a lit-up screen and typing on pieces of plastic all day long. 

Our loneliness is a beautiful invitation. We have work to do to create a just, thriving, loving society and we will be better equipped to create that world if we can root ourselves in our bodies, in the earth, and connected to our ancestors and LISTEN TO EACH OTHER FROM THERE.

A little story:

I was on CBS Sunday morning a couple years ago.  On the interview I said with strong conviction “Everyone gets lonely.”  As happens when I am on any sort of media, I get calls and email after.  And I had two very distinct and opposite calls.

An angry email came in from a family doctor.  He said to me “You are wrong.  Not everyone gets lonely.  I am not lonely.  I have a beautiful life. You need to watch what you say.” At the closing of his note, he shared his wife had recently died. Loss is one of the leading causes of loneliness. 

On the same day, I got a voicemail.  Again from a man.  And he said “I am a really successful business-man.  I have so many wonderful friends, I love my wife and kids, and I feel this loneliness you speak of all the time.  Why do I have this?” he asked. 

Well sir, I think I finally have your answer.  At Sidewalk Talk we will be bringing on more guests to our podcast that have us consider how we are disconnected from our bodies, the earth, and our ancestors. Our new HEAR curriculum takes this up.  And the funny thing is, when I was asked to craft a new listening curriculum I read and read, studied and studied and then one day took my notebook to the redwoods in California and sat for hours to craft what we bring to companies everywhere.

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