That Moment You Feel Completely Unlonely

Loneliness is the experience of feeling unseen and misunderstood. Unloneliness is its direct opposite and, every once in a while, it can be found in the most unexpected of moments and the most unanticipated of places…

I’m in discussions with my publisher about this book I’ve been writing with paid subscribers here on Substack, which we’ve been calling “The Inner Gathering.”

In a way, it’s a book seven years in the making—a follow-up to Loveable that distills down all the conversations I’ve had with readers, clients, speaking audiences, and retreat participants since the release of the book in 2017. It is an answer to the three-words I hear all the time. “Yes! But how?” It is a deeply playful and sometimes humorous book, with an eye toward the practicality of turning our most triggered moments into total self-acceptance and the best kind of belonging.

This is what (I thought, in my sensitive writer head) I heard my publisher say in response to the idea: “We love the concept and the writing is fantastic, but could you approach it a little more like this other author we publish whose books have sold better? Less storytelling and more teaching. And when you do tell stories, tell your clients’ stories instead of your own."

These are reasonable requests, though contrary to the writing style I’ve developed over the last decade. It had me doubting myself as much as I’ve ever doubted myself as a writer. I felt a deep sense of loneliness, of being unseen and misunderstood. So I slipped into moody-starving-artist mode. If you’re not sure what that looks like, just picture one of your family members on one of their worst days, and it's probably pretty close.

I got into bed that night, opened Frederick Buechner’s second memoir called Now and Then—which I’ve been re-reading in fits and starts over the course of this year—and this is the first paragraph that greeted me:

In writing those lectures and the book they later turned into, it came to seem to me that if I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. What I started trying to do as a writer and as a preacher was more and more to draw on my experience not just as a source of plot, character, illustration, but as a source of truth.

And boom. Just like that: unloneliness. I felt seen and understood. By a man who passed away last year and who I never even spoke to, except in the way of course that all writing and reading is a dialogue between writer and reader.

Earlier in the week I’d shared a post in social media about his writing. It said, “I'm pretty sure when we say something is ‘great writing’ what we often mean is ‘I feel greatly less alone because there is at least one other person on the planet who can put into words what it is like here inside my skin.’ Who is your great writer, and why?”

Here today, I want to ask that question of you, too: who is your great writer and why?

Before you answer, I have to admit, in social media several people named me, which I didn’t see coming. To one of those people I wrote, “I can honestly say that response hadn't occurred to me, and I'm not sure if that blind spot is a good thing or a bad thing. In the spirit of Frederick Buechner, I'll say I suppose it is a bit of both.”

You all already showered me with so much love last week in response to my post about belonging that I’m still drenched. So instead of naming me, I’d love it if the comments section here became a list of other authors beloved by this wonderful, wise Humaning community—the kinds of authors who, every once in a while, make us feel completely unlonely.

Looking forward to seeing who you name!

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Each week leading up to Christmas I’m randomly choosing one lucky commenter to receive a signed copy of each of my books. Last week’s winner was Mike H!

Drop the name of your favorite “unloneliness author” in the comments to this post and I’ll announce the winner again next Wednesday (winners must have a U.S. mailing address). Or take matters into your own hands by tapping the button below!