Hey, it’s Cat!
Quick intro
If we don’t know each other yet, hello! For the last 20 years, I’ve been living in Northeast LA, spending most of my time in cafes making friends with people from every walk of life because loneliness sucks and I’d been trapped in it for 25 years and had enough. Also because I needed a social safety net to catch me and my son, Noah, in the wake of a traumatizing divorce. I’m hoping this newsletter can be one way to extend that cafe experience to more people. For 5 years I’ve been working across industries to spark movements of belonging with and for everyone that I can. My focus has been on higher ed, where I’m currently at USC as the Director of Belonging, empowering students to become hotspots of belonging that change their inner and outer worlds by loving them as they are.
Thank you for reading—it means a lot to know you’re out there caring about these things, too, because let me tell you how lonely loneliness workers are! So lonely. I’ve been wanting to make a letter like this for years, but it’s been hard to figure out how–can I tell you why?
ONE! I don’t really know who I’m writing to. I have no “niche” audience and both hate the idea of “audiences” and the word “niche.” Because loneliness and belonging are inescapable human experiences, I end up supporting the subgroup of humans who, get this: are having experiences. What I’ve realized is that we desperately need a place for all of us to talk about our complex experiences, as humans, not just within our subgroups. I want to have the broadest possible conversation together, since this matters for every one of us, and we each have things to give each other. This’ll be a telegram that’s all for one and one for all, partner:).
TWO! My work on belonging has emerged from one-on-one, in person exchanges, often in public “third spaces.” They’re both personal and interactive. They’re shaped by the setting’s acoustics and dampness; the cafe’s closing time and me having to pee. Newsletters are…the complete opposite. Completely odorless and tasteless, I hope. So it’s disorienting to have no shared physical context. No face to read. And no assurance that you’ll drive me home if I get a flat from aggressively curbing my tires (phobia.)
BUCKLE MY SHOE! Publicly, I’ve been mum about big parts of my own life for reasons that range from lack of confidence to legit legal risk to loved ones. It’s hard to authentically grow community when you can’t share the underground things you live from. I haven’t known what to do about that, so I’ve just kept a close inner circle who knows what I really deal with and then make muffins and jokes above ground. But it’s been ten years, and the cost of silence is too great for my own sweet soul and the larger work. So, I’ll try sharing some hard stuff that influences how and why I engage this work, partly because I deserve to not be lonely in these things, and also because I refuse to ask you to trust me, if I’m not willing to trust you with my instagram-unworthy stories.
Befriending Loneliness
Please let’s wave our white flags over the “war on loneliness” we’ve been told to wage by people steeped in the deadly idea that violence solves anything, let alone a “problem” like loneliness. We shouldn’t be trying to end, evade, eradicate, prevent, bomb, poison or otherwise snuff out our own or anyone else’s loneliness. Our lonelinesses are effective, brilliant signals asking us to pay attention and take care of them. We do this by patiently discovering what the loneliness needs and involving ourselves in helping secure it. We befriend it as part of us.
Loneliness—in all its shades, durations, and degrees—is the part of our experience that deserves the most gentleness and encouragement. It is a tender teacher. Loneliness offers to us both new depths of healing, purpose and joy as well as a powerful bridge of connection to our human family, all of whom share in the burden and blessing of interdependence. As we befriend our loneliness, we become hotspots of belonging that provide warmth and protection to everyone else on our frontiers.
Heads up, buttercup
The Belonging Frontier telegram will arrive each Tuesday, covered in dirt and goo. It will have illustrations of strange things, stuff I’m learning, questions I don’t know the answers to, and tales of woe and glory. That’s all I know about it so far because I’ll be writing from whatever’s actually happening that week. Please write back, even if you don’t think you’re in an inspired part of your social journey. Yes, you are. All the parts count :).
.-.. --- ...- .
Cat
(P.S.—that’s morse code for, ‘love’!!!!)