I ask the great spiritual guide and poet Mark Nepo about how silence and stillness clears the waters of our soul and explore why the prospect of being less lonely fills me with a surprising regret.
Your exploration of solitude and loneliness resonated deeply. It's a reminder that even amidst a bustling social life, carving out moments of solitude is crucial. It's in those quiet spaces that we truly connect with ourselves, hear our inner voice, and recharge. As you beautifully put it, solitude has given you more than it has taken. I find that to be true in my own life as well – it's often when I'm alone that I have my most profound insights and creative breakthroughs.
Dear Amy, thank you as always for sharing the complexity of layers around alone, loneliness and solitude. I, too read and ponder Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening every morning and have since July 2023. (and before then too, but now it is absolutely daily! <3
I am so glad you had the opportunity and bravery to ask Mark Nepo a question directly, what a gift shared! <3 Your question was so beautifully crafted too. And I loved most in Mark's response the idea of stillness and silence looking different person to person (that's how I interpreted his sentence about writing being meditation too.)
I loved your addition of centeredness in your year of discovery: oh how deeply centeredness impacts our experiences!
I have become more and more grateful and attuned to solitude. It's so very different when one chooses it, you know? I find that I often look forward to evenings when I have nothing planned other than my own company and either a book or a movie or sitting with myself pondering what life may hold next.
I finally chose my words for 2025 and forgive my brain, I cannot recall if I shared so here they are either first time or again :) Let Go. Rebuild. I am letting go of expectations, demands from my mom, from gender/cultural/societal norms. I am rebuilding my sense of self, mental well being and confidence which were batter by 'death by a thousand cuts' mostly from my mom, but also from ridiculous societal expectations.
I feel like these words fit with your essay here on solitude, as I finally have a bit of peace in the stillness rather than the dread of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop.' Much of this peace has been built by extricating from the demands of a mother who, unfortunately has mental health issues which at 81 are most likely not going to improve much. So, it is up to me to claim my space, my voice and respond/react in a healthier way for my own needs, now that 'crisis' mode is for the time being over.
Anyhoo, I am grateful for stillness, silence, solitude. Yesterday on my walk I again say an American Bald Eagle here in Allentown PA! Wow! And as the bird flew low over the pond I could hear it's wings flap. I could feel the power in it's strength. It was such a powerful reminder of higher perspective.
I've also been doing more research/reading around women who chose to be single and their views on solitude, silence, stillness: delicious! Glenn Close was most recent.
I am so excited (and only a tiny envious) of your move to Barcelona! Oh to be freed from the many layers of sick here in the US! And I look forward to hearing how living on your own in a new country unfolds! You are a wonder!
Thank you for this lovely, generous share of your heart & journey Kristin💗I think your word of the year is perfect & I see you making some powerful realizations & explorations that are similar to my own. I hope you come visit me in Barcelona as soon as you’re able to😀
I really enjoyed reading this digging in a bit to your life: so much recent loss and amazing initiations/transitions. The under current of your life is very alive. There is no doubt about that.
I used to know mark years ago. Wonderful work wonderful being.
Beautiful essay and I’m so glad that you have support for this big move ahead and to integrate all that has already happened.
I look forward to learning more about your discovery throughout 2025 !
Thank you Prajna; i appreciate your thoughtful comments so much. I have certainly had a lot of transitions but feel stronger for everything I’ve learned & the growth I’ve been open to. Continued integration ahead!💗
Refreshingly vulnerable. I think everybody has dealt with loneliness at one point in their life. I like how Henry Nouwen expresses turning loneliness into solitude. My brother had him as a professor at Yale when I was young and I remember talking to him as a teenager. I grew up in the country and would walk near these trees and I felt like they were my friends. My point is, nature has been one of my best friends and I always find solitude there. I remember another writer speaking about loneliness like it was a person and they could recognize loneliness was lonely. And so they recommended to talk to that lonely person and help them to realize they’re not really alone. I have two of Mark Nepos books and I agree, he has so much wisdom and insight.
I do find it comforting to write in a journal as well. Thank you for sharing, wishing you all the best in Barcelona on your new adventure!
Amy, how grateful I am you took the time to comment. I appreciate as always your heartfelt and compassionate words. Thank you for introducing me to Henry Nouwen, I will look into his work. You do know that for my mom Freda, trees were among her best friends and she always liked to hug them, so now Marielle, Sara and I and Toby do it in her honor. We can always find kinship in nature, I agree. Have you ever read Richard Powers' novel The Overstory? It is the most beautiful book about trees and humans ever written, I think. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Which Mark Nepo books do you have? I need to read his work more widely. Keep on journaling and look forward to seeing you again hopefully this year.
Amy, this essay is so alive! I can feel the buzz, the excitement of your discoveries and upcoming move away from solitude and it is truly a joy to witness.
I loved the lake metaphor you shared, thank you! I would add that the bottom of the lake does not stay stagnant, it is always there, but it also shifts and moves slowly over time, providing nourishment and protection for the lake's creatures. Like a lake bottom, I'm constantly (re)creating, constantly becoming as I move through the world. I like how you think of it as "Holding center means never abandoning myself for the sake of something outside myself" and how your solitude has "allowed me to see to the bottom of the lake." I've been spending a lot of time moving through the choppy waves to reach the bottom as well. I love this metaphor so much!
Thank you Tracey, how happy your comment makes me! The lake metaphor is powerful and I appreciate how you took it further, to the very bottom that doesn't stay stagnant but keeps shifting as well. How beautiful your phrase, "I'm constantly becoming as I move through the world." I feel that, too. I know that has always been the case but it is such a gift to be aware of it now, to appreciate the moment and these shifts, the ebb and flow of the life, like the ripple of a lake or the current of a river or the wave of the sea. Water is such a powerful metaphor.
I think there are different proclivities due to 'personality type', as an approximation of what this notion really entails. I have lived alone between marriages (twice) and found it comforting to be in a state of solitude, usually best when not in my domicile, but wandering among the non-civilized patches that civilization still allows. But, even as an introvert, I treasured the human connections that were available to me--just not too much of them, and when not on demand from others. As for writing as a meditation, I don't disagree; when fully engaged in creative writing or in memoirs, correspondence, etc., I am somewhere not in time.
Ron, I love this comment, especially your phrase ,"wandering among the non-civilized patches that civilization still allows." How beautiful and apt. It sounds like you know yourself quite well and how to find that balance with introversion and extroversion. Happy meditating as you write!
I'm shedding quiet tears of joy and my soul has been deeply touched by this extraordinarily beautiful essay. Amy, thank you for sharing the gift of yourself. I'm witnessing the widening of the river of experience and of life, as Mark Nepo writes in his entry in The Book of Awakening today. Your insights, self compassion and craft have reached new levels of depth that, when shared, deeply nourish the soul of your readers. I'm so happy and grateful to be sailing alongside you in a kayak on the river of our life journey. 💕🪷🫶
How thoughtful your comment is, Louisa, and much appreciated, from my soul to yours. It is through you that Mark Nepo came into my life in the first place and I am forever grateful for that. Let's keep sailing along in our kayaks in the river of our life journey--I love that image.
I have told people for years that writing is my meditation! My very quiet morning time, spent pen in hand with paper, is when I’m most mindful and connected to what’s happening deep inside me.
Loneliness is a very weird thing. It rarely has anything to do with the number of people surrounding one. A person can be incredibly lonely in the middle of an entire group of people and not lonely at all when totally alone. In all the years living in New York, before moving to Stockholm and being married to Håkan I don't think I ever felt lonely. And sometimes while living with the man I chose to live with, I have felt very lonely.
And as an introvert, I find being social to be very energy expensive. I value my friendships but still it takes a lot of my energy to engage with them. I enjoy being with them but when I go home I am exhausted. I enjoy the solitude of being in my own head. And I don't know, but I find that the older I get, the more I find advice from others to not really apply to me. But I am also a very talkative person, I love to discuss ideas with others, to hear what others think about things. But then I go home to my aloneness and mull over what I believe.
I think extroverts have a harder time with being alone. And I think you are very much an extrovert. You gather people around you. You build webs connecting people together. It is why when you left Sweden, I missed you so much. You had gathered me into your web and gave me a group of people to know and be social with. When you left, my social network went with you. I had to build one on my own, and for me that is very hard work. And I have had to find new extroverts to sweep me up in their webs. But none have been able to replace you.
Hopefully, coming back to Europe, and building a new life here will help you to find a new home, filled with a web of friends and connections that satisfy that extrovert's need to be with others and to feel at peace with oneself and not lonely.
Lots of love to you kiddo. And I hope to see you when you are back on this side of the Atlantic.
Hilarie, I am so touched by this thoughtful response and I miss you, too. It is certainly in my nature to build webs connecting people, and I loved doing that in the years I lived in Stockholm; thank you for saying how you appreciated that, and I know you've been building your own webs. After all you are the one that spun the web of our Jewish-American parenting group in Stockholm which lives on to this day and means so much to so many of us. But what I have discovered is that I have the need to be both an extrovert and an introvert--and I wasn't feeding the latter enough, allowing for enough introspection--until some tough life decisions and traumatic events like caring for my mom with dementia forced more solitude upon me. I appreciated too your reflections on how we can feel lonely even in a crowd or in our most intimate relationship as with a partner or spouse. That is certainly true. I also know that your experience of being social as a draining activity isn't unique either. I love discussing ideas with you and look forward to more of that in person once I am living in Europe, since Sweden will be a lot closer then. I think it is quite beautiful that after being with others in conversation "I go home to my aloneness and mull over what I believe." I do that, too. I suspect we all do. Hugs to you, my friend!
I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much reading this helped me, Amy.
Mark is a gem, a treasure like no other! My eyes and heart were so full reading his response to your question and then to see that screenshot of the frame - what a gorgeous moment. And what a wonderful friend you have in Louisa.
I’ll be back with more later. Because I know I need to read this again and let it all settle in me (my inner lake) ❤️
This, though - “writing is meditation” cracked something open in me.
Thank you Allison, my heart swells with joy that this connected with you in such a strong way, which I knew it would, as we share the same appreciation for dear Mark. His empathy, kindness, intuitiveness and ability for deep listening as well as his heart-forward wisdom is so apparent when you get to "meet" him and learn directly from him. Such a gift it has been, and I am so glad the musings my time with him sparked has given you something you needed. May we continue to meditate through our writing. Much love to you!
Your exploration of solitude and loneliness resonated deeply. It's a reminder that even amidst a bustling social life, carving out moments of solitude is crucial. It's in those quiet spaces that we truly connect with ourselves, hear our inner voice, and recharge. As you beautifully put it, solitude has given you more than it has taken. I find that to be true in my own life as well – it's often when I'm alone that I have my most profound insights and creative breakthroughs.
Thank you Alexander for this kind note and for finding points of connection in a shared appreciation for solitude.
Dear Amy, thank you as always for sharing the complexity of layers around alone, loneliness and solitude. I, too read and ponder Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening every morning and have since July 2023. (and before then too, but now it is absolutely daily! <3
I am so glad you had the opportunity and bravery to ask Mark Nepo a question directly, what a gift shared! <3 Your question was so beautifully crafted too. And I loved most in Mark's response the idea of stillness and silence looking different person to person (that's how I interpreted his sentence about writing being meditation too.)
I loved your addition of centeredness in your year of discovery: oh how deeply centeredness impacts our experiences!
I have become more and more grateful and attuned to solitude. It's so very different when one chooses it, you know? I find that I often look forward to evenings when I have nothing planned other than my own company and either a book or a movie or sitting with myself pondering what life may hold next.
I finally chose my words for 2025 and forgive my brain, I cannot recall if I shared so here they are either first time or again :) Let Go. Rebuild. I am letting go of expectations, demands from my mom, from gender/cultural/societal norms. I am rebuilding my sense of self, mental well being and confidence which were batter by 'death by a thousand cuts' mostly from my mom, but also from ridiculous societal expectations.
I feel like these words fit with your essay here on solitude, as I finally have a bit of peace in the stillness rather than the dread of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop.' Much of this peace has been built by extricating from the demands of a mother who, unfortunately has mental health issues which at 81 are most likely not going to improve much. So, it is up to me to claim my space, my voice and respond/react in a healthier way for my own needs, now that 'crisis' mode is for the time being over.
Anyhoo, I am grateful for stillness, silence, solitude. Yesterday on my walk I again say an American Bald Eagle here in Allentown PA! Wow! And as the bird flew low over the pond I could hear it's wings flap. I could feel the power in it's strength. It was such a powerful reminder of higher perspective.
I've also been doing more research/reading around women who chose to be single and their views on solitude, silence, stillness: delicious! Glenn Close was most recent.
I am so excited (and only a tiny envious) of your move to Barcelona! Oh to be freed from the many layers of sick here in the US! And I look forward to hearing how living on your own in a new country unfolds! You are a wonder!
with love,
Kristin
Thank you for this lovely, generous share of your heart & journey Kristin💗I think your word of the year is perfect & I see you making some powerful realizations & explorations that are similar to my own. I hope you come visit me in Barcelona as soon as you’re able to😀
Hi Amy,
I really enjoyed reading this digging in a bit to your life: so much recent loss and amazing initiations/transitions. The under current of your life is very alive. There is no doubt about that.
I used to know mark years ago. Wonderful work wonderful being.
Beautiful essay and I’m so glad that you have support for this big move ahead and to integrate all that has already happened.
I look forward to learning more about your discovery throughout 2025 !
🌹💚🌹
Thank you Prajna; i appreciate your thoughtful comments so much. I have certainly had a lot of transitions but feel stronger for everything I’ve learned & the growth I’ve been open to. Continued integration ahead!💗
Refreshingly vulnerable. I think everybody has dealt with loneliness at one point in their life. I like how Henry Nouwen expresses turning loneliness into solitude. My brother had him as a professor at Yale when I was young and I remember talking to him as a teenager. I grew up in the country and would walk near these trees and I felt like they were my friends. My point is, nature has been one of my best friends and I always find solitude there. I remember another writer speaking about loneliness like it was a person and they could recognize loneliness was lonely. And so they recommended to talk to that lonely person and help them to realize they’re not really alone. I have two of Mark Nepos books and I agree, he has so much wisdom and insight.
I do find it comforting to write in a journal as well. Thank you for sharing, wishing you all the best in Barcelona on your new adventure!
Amy, how grateful I am you took the time to comment. I appreciate as always your heartfelt and compassionate words. Thank you for introducing me to Henry Nouwen, I will look into his work. You do know that for my mom Freda, trees were among her best friends and she always liked to hug them, so now Marielle, Sara and I and Toby do it in her honor. We can always find kinship in nature, I agree. Have you ever read Richard Powers' novel The Overstory? It is the most beautiful book about trees and humans ever written, I think. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Which Mark Nepo books do you have? I need to read his work more widely. Keep on journaling and look forward to seeing you again hopefully this year.
You give us so much to reflect upon Amy. Many of your words ring so true to my heart. I so enjoy your newsletters ❤️
Thank you Sandy for taking time to read and comment. Very happy to hear this connected to your heart, my soul sister!
Amy, this essay is so alive! I can feel the buzz, the excitement of your discoveries and upcoming move away from solitude and it is truly a joy to witness.
I loved the lake metaphor you shared, thank you! I would add that the bottom of the lake does not stay stagnant, it is always there, but it also shifts and moves slowly over time, providing nourishment and protection for the lake's creatures. Like a lake bottom, I'm constantly (re)creating, constantly becoming as I move through the world. I like how you think of it as "Holding center means never abandoning myself for the sake of something outside myself" and how your solitude has "allowed me to see to the bottom of the lake." I've been spending a lot of time moving through the choppy waves to reach the bottom as well. I love this metaphor so much!
Thank you Tracey, how happy your comment makes me! The lake metaphor is powerful and I appreciate how you took it further, to the very bottom that doesn't stay stagnant but keeps shifting as well. How beautiful your phrase, "I'm constantly becoming as I move through the world." I feel that, too. I know that has always been the case but it is such a gift to be aware of it now, to appreciate the moment and these shifts, the ebb and flow of the life, like the ripple of a lake or the current of a river or the wave of the sea. Water is such a powerful metaphor.
I think there are different proclivities due to 'personality type', as an approximation of what this notion really entails. I have lived alone between marriages (twice) and found it comforting to be in a state of solitude, usually best when not in my domicile, but wandering among the non-civilized patches that civilization still allows. But, even as an introvert, I treasured the human connections that were available to me--just not too much of them, and when not on demand from others. As for writing as a meditation, I don't disagree; when fully engaged in creative writing or in memoirs, correspondence, etc., I am somewhere not in time.
Ron, I love this comment, especially your phrase ,"wandering among the non-civilized patches that civilization still allows." How beautiful and apt. It sounds like you know yourself quite well and how to find that balance with introversion and extroversion. Happy meditating as you write!
I'm shedding quiet tears of joy and my soul has been deeply touched by this extraordinarily beautiful essay. Amy, thank you for sharing the gift of yourself. I'm witnessing the widening of the river of experience and of life, as Mark Nepo writes in his entry in The Book of Awakening today. Your insights, self compassion and craft have reached new levels of depth that, when shared, deeply nourish the soul of your readers. I'm so happy and grateful to be sailing alongside you in a kayak on the river of our life journey. 💕🪷🫶
How thoughtful your comment is, Louisa, and much appreciated, from my soul to yours. It is through you that Mark Nepo came into my life in the first place and I am forever grateful for that. Let's keep sailing along in our kayaks in the river of our life journey--I love that image.
Yes to all that! Let's 🌊🛶🛶🏞
😍💜Mark Nepo! Thanks for sharing this!
Glad you enjoyed it, Miranda!
I have told people for years that writing is my meditation! My very quiet morning time, spent pen in hand with paper, is when I’m most mindful and connected to what’s happening deep inside me.
We are so alike that way, Sally!
Hi Amy,
Loneliness is a very weird thing. It rarely has anything to do with the number of people surrounding one. A person can be incredibly lonely in the middle of an entire group of people and not lonely at all when totally alone. In all the years living in New York, before moving to Stockholm and being married to Håkan I don't think I ever felt lonely. And sometimes while living with the man I chose to live with, I have felt very lonely.
And as an introvert, I find being social to be very energy expensive. I value my friendships but still it takes a lot of my energy to engage with them. I enjoy being with them but when I go home I am exhausted. I enjoy the solitude of being in my own head. And I don't know, but I find that the older I get, the more I find advice from others to not really apply to me. But I am also a very talkative person, I love to discuss ideas with others, to hear what others think about things. But then I go home to my aloneness and mull over what I believe.
I think extroverts have a harder time with being alone. And I think you are very much an extrovert. You gather people around you. You build webs connecting people together. It is why when you left Sweden, I missed you so much. You had gathered me into your web and gave me a group of people to know and be social with. When you left, my social network went with you. I had to build one on my own, and for me that is very hard work. And I have had to find new extroverts to sweep me up in their webs. But none have been able to replace you.
Hopefully, coming back to Europe, and building a new life here will help you to find a new home, filled with a web of friends and connections that satisfy that extrovert's need to be with others and to feel at peace with oneself and not lonely.
Lots of love to you kiddo. And I hope to see you when you are back on this side of the Atlantic.
/Hilarie
Hilarie, I am so touched by this thoughtful response and I miss you, too. It is certainly in my nature to build webs connecting people, and I loved doing that in the years I lived in Stockholm; thank you for saying how you appreciated that, and I know you've been building your own webs. After all you are the one that spun the web of our Jewish-American parenting group in Stockholm which lives on to this day and means so much to so many of us. But what I have discovered is that I have the need to be both an extrovert and an introvert--and I wasn't feeding the latter enough, allowing for enough introspection--until some tough life decisions and traumatic events like caring for my mom with dementia forced more solitude upon me. I appreciated too your reflections on how we can feel lonely even in a crowd or in our most intimate relationship as with a partner or spouse. That is certainly true. I also know that your experience of being social as a draining activity isn't unique either. I love discussing ideas with you and look forward to more of that in person once I am living in Europe, since Sweden will be a lot closer then. I think it is quite beautiful that after being with others in conversation "I go home to my aloneness and mull over what I believe." I do that, too. I suspect we all do. Hugs to you, my friend!
I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much reading this helped me, Amy.
Mark is a gem, a treasure like no other! My eyes and heart were so full reading his response to your question and then to see that screenshot of the frame - what a gorgeous moment. And what a wonderful friend you have in Louisa.
I’ll be back with more later. Because I know I need to read this again and let it all settle in me (my inner lake) ❤️
This, though - “writing is meditation” cracked something open in me.
Thanks dear friend!
Thank you Allison, my heart swells with joy that this connected with you in such a strong way, which I knew it would, as we share the same appreciation for dear Mark. His empathy, kindness, intuitiveness and ability for deep listening as well as his heart-forward wisdom is so apparent when you get to "meet" him and learn directly from him. Such a gift it has been, and I am so glad the musings my time with him sparked has given you something you needed. May we continue to meditate through our writing. Much love to you!
Thank you for sharing that gift with all of us! I’m still cracked open since reading this a couple days ago. 🙏🏼🫶