http://www.lonelythebook.com/2012/03/ok-for-interviews/ A memoir by Emily White Wed, 15 May 2013 12:24:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://www.lonelythebook.com/2012/03/ok-for-interviews/comment-page-1/#comment-11928 Robin Wilderman Thu, 17 May 2012 17:21:03 +0000 http://www.lonelythebook.com/?p=772#comment-11928 A friend gave your book 'Lonely' to me earlier this year and it was a relief to see someone put down in print what has been my reality for decades. I am in my early forties and even though I am very social, well educated, and people-savvy - and in a job that requires me to be both social and connected (church ministry in a rural context) - I wrestle with crippling loneliness. I live and work in a very family oriented, deeply 'clan connected' community and moved into it as a professional, hired outsider. As a single person here, I have more opportunities for casual consistent contact than I ever had in the city, as well as more full social life, but I am still an outsider whose profession sets her apart and whose unmarried status makes her an object of curiousity (benevolent for the most part; if I was a male, it likely wouldn't be). I seem to be dipping into a mid-life grief struggle over my single and very lonely status, wrestling with the reality of not having a partner or children, both of which I very much wanted. I find myself beginning to become short-tempered and uninterested in other people's pain, and my love for and practice of writing for pleasure has died. I guess the closest metaphor I can come up with would be a form of emotional and spiritual starvation. A friend gave your book ‘Lonely’ to me earlier this year and it was a relief to see someone put down in print what has been my reality for decades. I am in my early forties and even though I am very social, well educated, and people-savvy – and in a job that requires me to be both social and connected (church ministry in a rural context) – I wrestle with crippling loneliness. I live and work in a very family oriented, deeply ‘clan connected’ community and moved into it as a professional, hired outsider. As a single person here, I have more opportunities for casual consistent contact than I ever had in the city, as well as more full social life, but I am still an outsider whose profession sets her apart and whose unmarried status makes her an object of curiousity (benevolent for the most part; if I was a male, it likely wouldn’t be). I seem to be dipping into a mid-life grief struggle over my single and very lonely status, wrestling with the reality of not having a partner or children, both of which I very much wanted. I find myself beginning to become short-tempered and uninterested in other people’s pain, and my love for and practice of writing for pleasure has died. I guess the closest metaphor I can come up with would be a form of emotional and spiritual starvation.

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