Discover practical strategies to support a family member struggling with loneliness. Learn how to initiate conversation, encourage social interaction, provide emotional support, and foster a sense of belonging.

Loneliness exists beyond the holidays, yet only during this family-themed season do we glimpse the despair endured by millions throughout the entire year.

At the behest of my mother, I recently sat down to watch the Untold Netflix docuseries, focusing on Manti Te'o and his experience with being catfished by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. While it may be easy to assert that Ronaiah is the story's villain, the true evil was the systemic failure to affirm diversity.

Claiming religious objection to providing life-saving services is an admission of personal apostasy. You are no longer serving God. I realized that in the years I was actively waving the banner of my faith, I was harming people I'd never met. I caused harm. I caused hurt. And I did it believing I was helping those who were suffering. I realized I was part of the problem after serving the communities I feared the most.

Skiing never came easy to me. My older brother was a phenomenal skier. It came naturally to him, or at least he made it appear so. Either way, it made my lack of talent even more evident and painful. And I do mean painful. My parents were relentless in their insistence I learn to ski, despite coming home from full-day classes with more bruises and fat lips than I can count.

What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked in advertising for a fellow named Tracy. He would occasionally tell the story of how he had won his most prominent client, an established and beloved grocery chain in Utah. While I'm sure he had caressed the story over the years, the underlying lesson was characterologically Tracy.

Not long after moving to Colorado this summer, a stranger from the local religious community began inundating me with countless texts and calls. I was too burdened by the move to respond. My deferrals strengthened this woman's resolve to infringe on my privacy. She left random trinkets and notes on my doorstep. Despite explicit requests to stay off my property, she would knock on my door, hoping to initiate contact.

I’ve struggled my entire life to understand who I am and to know my role here amongst humanity. As a therapist, I often guide people through the process of identity development. I help patients and clients navigate the parts about themselves they like, the parts they dislike and facilitate their identification of characterological elements that transcend various identities they navigate or embrace.

Years ago, at the request of a mutual friend and the consent of all parties involved, I found myself arguing the importance of accepting a person’s stated identity. I needed this mother to accept her son as her daughter. In a quarrel I probably should have been smart enough to avoid, I dug deep into my arsenal of logical and emotional persuasion methods.

I spent my first twelve years on Earth confident my life would end in a sudden flash of light. I was a child of the (late) seventies, and perhaps by then those who had lived through the missile crises of the previous decades had begun to doubt that cataclysmic inevitability.

This morning I read a friend’s social media post declaring that she is working tirelessly to become somebody she’s proud to be. It’s a familiar tale. Too many of us believe that we are not, at this moment, enough.

Maybe it took a global pandemic rendering us isolated and powerless to gain awareness of our loneliness. Why is lonely such a terrifying word? Those kids up to no good: loners. Mass shooters: loners. Those who bother us or are otherwise unworthy of our attention or affection: loners.