Case Studies Jan/Feb - Page 5


It took about six months for Lisa's life to resume a semblance of normality after the breakup with Sam—six terrible months. Being alone in the apartment stirred up all sorts of painful feelings, and she hated going home. Like many of us, Lisa confused aloneness with loneliness, but they aren't the same. The word alone means simply, "apart from others"; it's a neutral state, neither good nor bad, unless emotional memories tilt it in one direction or the other. For women, it's usually tainted with a sense of being excluded, rejected, or punished, and, therefore, unworthy of being with others. In part, we develop these attitudes in childhood. We were told to leave the table or go to our room if we were "bad"; inevitably, the stigma and pain of exile from the magic circle of the family became associated with being alone. In Lisa's case, aloneness took on the dark hues of rejection, influenced in part by the sad defeat of her maiden aunt, but more by her self-absorbed socialite mother, whose life revolved around parties, lovers, and travel.

Loneliness is about a sense of loss, about missing a connection with another person. Lisa's first experience of "real loneliness" coincided with the death of her father, a naturalist who'd spent much of his free time cultivating African violets in the hothouse he'd built especially for them. She'd spend hours at a time helping him. "He died just before my eleventh birthday, and in a strange way, I think I've been lonely for his company ever since."

The issue isn't that we'll never feel lonely; after all, some degree of loneliness exists in all our lives: the issue is how aloneness makes us feel about ourselves. What the definition of alone doesn't make clear is the essential difference between aloneness and loneliness: that to be "apart from others" also means to be in the presence of oneself—and this is exactly what Lisa, like many women, wanted to avoid.

Solitude is the spacious silence inherent in aloneness. One of its great boons is peace, a state of inner quiet and emotional harmony, which, in our crowded and hectic world, seems less available and, consequently, more precious than ever. What I call "active solitude" is a space in which a woman learns to speak with her own voice and move to her own rhythms—whether baking bread, arranging flowers, saying a prayer, or writing a symphony. It's a dynamic place, where her sense of self, like a good wine, has a protective space and enough time to mature and deepen.

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