Come Together

This writer, mom and chaplain’s wife learned to overcome loneliness. Here are her five best tips

- LAUREN CASPER

SO MANY PEOPLE ARE LONELY these days. Thanks to technology, we live in an increasingly interconnected world, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. Forty percent of Americans report that their social relationships are “not meaningful.” One-fifth of people say they’re “lonely or socially isolated.” Nearly a third of older adults live alone.

Loneliness is a physical as well as a mental health problem. Research links prolonged social isolation to higher risks for high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease and even death.

I don’t mean to frighten you. But I think it’s important to recognize the costs of our individualistic, on-the-go, screen-hypnotized culture. I speak from personal experience. I’m married to a wonderful husband who works as a chaplain at a military college. We have two children, and we live in a medium-size town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Yet I’ve spent long periods of my life feeling lonely.

Growing up in a Navy family presented unique social challenges. I moved three times during my three years in middle school, a social agony that still lingers. I was lonely through two miscarriages and an infertility diagnosis. And I was lonely as a young mom trying my best to be what I thought a good chaplain’s wife should be at my husband’s college chapel. That pretty much meant me in the foyer shushing the kids while church happened in the sanctuary.