Things We Dive Into In This Episode:
Loneliness as a very normal part of the human experience
How to sit with loneliness when it comes up
Creating community wherever you are
📘Resources
Nutrition & Intuition Retreat - Book a Commitment Free Discovery Call!
📌Episode Highlights
A note on Loneliness:
Loneliness is not at all pathological. Loneliness is not at all a problem. There is nothing wrong with you if you are feeling lonely. We are social creatures. We are not meant to go through life alone. Other human beings are a necessary part of mental and emotional health. Deep connections with other human beings are an important part of our sense of self-esteem and remembering our sense of self-worth and tapping into a sense of self-efficacy and feeling pleasure and fun and enjoying life completely.
Every time we are alone and we feel lonely, we do not need to put that loneliness out like a fire by texting someone or calling someone or inviting someone over or connecting with another person instantly. We don't always need the company of other people.
How to sit in loneliness when it comes up:
Loneliness only gets worse and more fiery and more toxic the longer I ignore my own needs. And so very often all I need to do is ask myself:
What do I need right now?
What might a companion offer for me that I actually could offer for myself?
What do my most loved companions in life do for me that I actually could do for myself right now?
Think about the people who support you the most life and the different things that they do for you.
How can you emulate the feelings and support that they give you?
And when you still feel lonely after that, just sit with it, feel it, and grieve it.
Grief comes with many layers. It comes with sadness. It comes with anger. It comes with loneliness. It comes with isolation. It comes with bargaining. It comes with denial. But there is so much wisdom in letting yourself feel the grief and sitting in the shit.
The point of the grief is the grief. The point of the grief is not putting a silver lining on the grief. Sometimes reframes can be helpful, but not when you’re trying to sit with and work through grief. Sometimes it's just about being in the feelings so that you can garner wisdom from these emotions.
Feeling deep, difficult emotions allows us deeper access to the other side of the coin.
If we let ourselves feel deep sadness, the level of deep happiness that we're able to access on the other side of it is so much greater.
If we let ourselves sit in deep loneliness, the deep appreciation and full body presence that we're able to feel when we're finally connected to another human again is unmatched.
Recognize that loneliness is temporary and it goes away.
When loneliness starts to creep in and it wants to spend the night with me, if I really let myself feel it and lean into it, I often wake up the next morning and it's gone.
The less I resist it, the less it persists.
Finding community wherever you are:
Openness to becoming friends or developing a connection with absolutely anyone that crosses your path:
I have found friends in the most unexpected circumstances, in the most unexpected ways. Same with business opportunities and relationships.
Try not to make assumptions about what kind of people you think you need to be friends with and about where you think you need to meet your friends.
Stay open to talking to a person that's sitting next to you at a restaurant. Stay open to talking to the person at the check-in desk at your yoga class. Stay open to talking to someone who's a little bit older than you. Stay open to talking to someone who's a little bit younger than you. Stay open to using cheesy apps like BumbleBFF. Stay open to your first impression of someone being wrong. Stay open to the connections that you already have and asking, hey, do you know anyone else in this city that I might be friends with? Can you connect me with other people who live in that place you used to live? Stay open to asking for connections of all kinds.
Trust that you don't know how the story is gonna go when it comes to your friendships and your relational life and your community.
Staying in touch:
Take inventory of your friends.
Write a list of people that I want to make sure that I'm staying connected to.
Drop the ones that you haven't spoken to in a long time, a quick text or a DM of something funny on Instagram or an audio note and really just consciously try to keep in touch.
Even if you don't really have that much time to talk right now or this week or maybe even this month, depending on the circumstances, just let them know that you really are thinking of them. If there's anything big going on with them, please share it with you. And let's make sure we catch up in real time soon, whether that be in person or over the phone.
The people who want to have you in their life, the people who love you, the people who understand you, the people who want to stay connected with you are going to meet you where you're at. And if you are honest with yourself, if you meet yourself where you're at, other people can meet you where you're at.
Asking for support is an act of kindness in itself:
A lot of people have this misconception that when they ask for support, they're putting a burden on another human being. More often than not, the people who are worried about being a burden are the people who are not actually a burden and need to remember that it is actually a really kind thing to let someone into your world. It's a privilege to let someone into your world.
I really do believe that we need to normalize saying, I'm struggling right now. My partner and I are struggling right now. I'm struggling with my kid right now. I'm struggling with my relationship with food right now. I'm struggling with my relationship with my body right now. You don’t have to say this to everyone, but say it to the people that matter to you.
Remember that it is a kind thing when you invite someone into your world and let them know what you need.
Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.
Transcript
Caitie: You know, compassion isn't just something we think. We don't think, oh, I feel so bad for that person. Compassion is something that we feel. We feel it in our bodies. We're like, oh, I feel for that person. Because I've sat with my own loneliness and my own sadness, my own grief so much, I am able to feel this somatic, bodily compassion for other people. And I'm so grateful for that. I think that sitting in my own grief and my own loneliness sometimes makes me a better counselor.
Welcome to Whole, Full, & Alive, a podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself and be yourself. I'm Caitie Corradino. I'm a registered Dietitian-Nutritionist, a body image coach and the founder of Full Soul Nutrition, a method that combines nutrition counseling with a powerful toolkit of somatic healing modalities. I have guided hundreds of clients to freedom with food, their bodies and every aspect of their lives. I've also been through this healing myself, and on this podcast, I want to help you eat with confidence, embrace your body, form aligned relationships and create a life that you're in love with. I'll share actionable tools, no bullshit stories and interviews that will remind you why you have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive. Are you ready? Let's get into it.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive, the podcast helping you feed yourself, fill yourself, and be yourself. Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode. I'm so grateful that you're here, and I'm so grateful to be speaking to you from my new home in Lisbon, Portugal. If you follow my story, you know that I have been nomadic, traveling around the world, not really living anywhere exactly for about two years. And I had a little stint in Denver, Colorado, but I ultimately didn't end up staying there for that long, ended up traveling like every three weeks while I was living there, gave up that apartment. And yeah, long story short, long and winding road short, I now live in Lisbon, Portugal, officially. As of last week.
I recorded last week's episode from here too, but I don't know if I really mentioned that I was here. I had literally just arrived. I had just put my suitcases on the floor and I recorded last week's podcast. So I was very jet lagged because I was coming from New York City. If you noticed, I was missing like maybe 10 or 20% of my personality in last week's episode. That's why, I was a little jet lagged. I was certainly speaking from the heart. I was certainly speaking in a candid, frank, authentic way, but I was also speaking with some jet lag.
Today, I have officially been moved into my apartment in Lisbon for one week. So I'm a little bit more peppy, a little bit more adjusted, a little bit more cozy. And really, as I said, excited to be speaking to you from here. Especially about the topic that I'm going to talk to you about today. So I posted a question sticker on my Instagram stories last week saying that I had arrived in Lisbon after two years of traveling. And I wanted to know what questions you all had about my traveling journey, about what it's been like to travel around the world, and also what it's been like to now ultimately move abroad. I am from New York/New Jersey, and now I live in Lisbon, Portugal.
And so many people asked me questions about loneliness. I received like 15 questions and almost all of them were about loneliness. A lot of questions about do you feel lonely? Do you feel isolated? Does that scare you? How do you deal with the fear of being alone? How do you deal with sometimes not knowing who to call when you're in certain situations? How do you deal with living in a place where ultimately the majority of your friends and all of your family don't live? How do you deal with traveling alone? So today's episode is going to be about loneliness, dealing with loneliness and dealing with the fear of being alone because that is ultimately something that I have been faced with a lot over the last two years. Of course, I am so grateful that people posed this question to me. I was expecting questions about finances and logistics and visas and how do I eat well and move my body while I'm traveling so much, but I got pretty much none of that and all questions about loneliness. So I'm gonna dive right into that topic today.
Before I do, two orders of business. The first one is that I want to invite you to sit in a moment of silence. I was at an amazing event yesterday. There's a new wellness space opening up here in Lisbon and I was invited to be a facilitator and a teacher at this new wellness space. So we had a meeting yesterday with myself and all the other people who have been invited to be facilitators in this space. And the owner of the studio opened up this meeting by asking all of us to just sit in silence for two full minutes. I thought that he was gonna lead us through a breathing exercise or invite us to adjust our posture a little bit or something like that. But he literally just set a timer on his phone for two minutes and we just sat there in silence just to meet ourselves, just to meet ourselves where we're at, just to ground our energy, to just actually arrive in the space before we just went tumbling into this meeting. I loved it. I found it so simple and so powerful. And so I normally invite you to take a few deep breaths at the top of this podcast, but today we're just gonna do 15 seconds of silence. You might be multitasking. If you are, you know, driving, doing your laundry, you can continue to do what you're doing, but I wanna invite you to really take these 15 seconds, just a pure silence, just you to take these 15 seconds just to maybe drop in a little bit more into what it is you're doing right now without distraction. And if you're not multitasking, I want to invite you to pull over, close your eyes, maybe turn your palms up towards the ceiling, and just drop into 15 seconds of silence. I'd love to do two minutes like my facilitator did yesterday, but I'm not going to take two minutes of a podcast of silence. So 15 seconds for you to meet yourself where you're at, starting now. Okay. Remember that no one can meet you where you're at if you can't meet yourself where you're at. Remember that you can't meet your needs if you can't pull over to identify them. And remember that we have so many distractions in our world today. So many notifications, so many flashing lights, so many things to look at and think about and engage with. And one of the most radical and powerful things we can do is pull over from all of that and just drop in and ground our energy so that we can engage more fully with whatever it is that's in front of us, whether it's another person that we really want to listen to or didn't know we even needed to listen to, whether it's a podcast in your ears, whether it's a book in your hands. 15 seconds of silence to just ground into it a little bit more can truly be so powerful.
Second order of business before we dive into today's topic is that in 10 days from today, I am hosting the nutrition and intuition retreat. This is going to be five nights, six days of empowering workshops, think breath work, Reiki, body image healing and more, energizing movement classes, which range from restorative yoga to high energy cardio, absolutely delicious meals cooked with a lot of love by an amazing in-house chef and exploration of Scotland, which is where our retreat center is. It's in the foothills of Scotland, about 30 minutes outside of Edinburgh. It is an incredible place with the coziest hospitality you will ever experience. If you have never been to Scotland, I can't recommend visiting enough. It feels like coming home. It feels like being wrapped in a cozy blanket. It feels like being wrapped in warmth. People are so kind there. The nature is so beautiful there. And it is the best place I can think of to create community, heal your relationship with your body, nestle into a good relationship with food. And we have just two spaces left on this retreat. If you are someone who is feeling at all called to join, if your soul is being pulled towards this retreat, I promise you that it never feels logical to join a retreat. You kind of just have to trust the pull to join. Please do not hesitate to jump on a call with me this week. You can jump on a call with me this week by clicking the link in the show notes, or you can DM me on Instagram @caitie.c.rd. You can visit my website at fullsoulnutrition.com/retreat to learn all the details of the retreat. But if you're feeling the pull to come, I know, I know that these last two spots are supposed to be filled with two people who are meant to join us for this experience that is going to be incredible. Absolutely incredible. I will help you book your flights. I will help you get the best deal on your flights. I will help you get to this retreat if it is where you want to go. So please don't hesitate to reach out to me. The Nutrition & Intuition retreat is happening in 10 days from today, March 21st, 2024. Please don't hesitate to join us. I can't wait to have you.
Okay, now for some words on being alone. I'm single. I have been single for a while. I travel everywhere alone. I meet people in the places I travel and I've had some friends meet me along the way. And in this beautiful city that I've just finally landed in, in Lisbon, I do have some community. And that said, I'm still single and I still live largely on my own. I do a lot of things on my own and I have certainly been confronted with really fiery, really hard tidal waves of loneliness throughout my time traveling. I would say the times when I feel the most alone are when I have to do something really challenging, such as moving my stuff. Oh my gosh. When I've had to carry my suitcases up places that I'm staying in that don't have elevators. When I've had to move my stuff in through an airport. When I was in Ecuador recently and I had to go to the hospital because I got really, really bad food poisoning and I was really dehydrated and I was traveling alone and I fainted at the airport. The moments when I felt the most alone were certainly in challenging moments like that. And also sometimes at night after very stressful work days, I can feel pretty alone.
I am a counselor and I do hold space for people all day and I talk to people all day, which is an immense privilege. I love that part of my work is truly connecting with other humans and I am holding space for people all day. And when they have a lot of heavy emotions that I'm kind of carrying and holding space for, it can feel like I'm pretty run down at the end of the day. And sometimes I really want someone to hold me and when a friend is not available or when I don't feel like going out at the end of the day, I am, you know, I am stuck with myself and loneliness. Loneliness can hit.
So on the onset, I think there are two really important things to remember about loneliness. The first thing is that loneliness is not at all pathological. Loneliness is not at all a problem. There is nothing wrong with you if you are feeling lonely. If you're feeling, if you're craving the company of another person, that just means you're a human being. Human beings crave the company of other human beings. We are social creatures. We are not meant to go through life entirely alone. And the second thing to remember is that we don't always need the company of other people. We don't need to put our loneliness out like a fire every time we feel it by finding another person to wipe it away. I've learned that it's really important to hold space for this duality when it comes to dealing with loneliness.
We are social creatures. We are not meant to go through life alone. Other human beings are a necessary part of mental and emotional health. Deep connections with other human beings are an important part of our sense of self-esteem and remembering our sense of self-worth and tapping into a sense of self-efficacy and feeling pleasure and fun and enjoying life completely. And every time we feel, every time we are alone and we feel lonely, we do not need to put that loneliness out like a fire by texting someone or calling someone or inviting someone over or connecting with another person instantly. There actually is a lot to learn from just sometimes feeling lonely and sitting in it. It's kind of like any other emotion. I pretty often say to my clients, don't rush to put your feelings out like a fire. Loneliness is one of those feelings that we shouldn't rush to put out like a fire because there is a lot that we can learn in that.
And so while we're acknowledging this duality of loneliness, while we're acknowledging that we do need other people and we do need to let ourselves feel lonely sometimes. What I'm gonna offer today is some ideas of how I've created community and I've made friends along the way while I'm traveling and I've prevented myself from becoming completely isolated despite being a single solo female traveler. And I'm gonna offer some ways that I let myself sit in loneliness without reaching for another person and kind of what I've learned from it. And I actually wanna start with the second one. I actually wanna start with talking about how I sit in the fire of loneliness, what I've learned from sitting in the fire of loneliness and how I've kind of been coping and dealing with it when it comes up. So. I love this quote that says something along the lines of, loneliness is often a sign that you're in desperate need of yourself. Because it is quite true that almost every single time I feel lonely, I'm ignoring my own needs in some way, and I'm not meeting my own needs in some way. Every single time I'm feeling lonely, and I have described these situations where I tend to feel lonely are these very challenging moments, or moments when I am really tired at the end of a long work day. And loneliness only gets worse and more fiery and more toxic the longer I ignore my own needs. And so very often all I need to do if I can just get myself to fucking do it in the moment that I'm feeling lonely is ask myself, hey, what the heck do I need right now? What might a companion offer for me that I actually could offer for myself? What do my most loved companions in life do for me that I actually could do for myself right now?
So for example, I did have a moment of loneliness on Thursday night last week. I don't know why I remember the day specifically, but it was just a long work day. I had a lot of challenging client sessions. Things have been feeling particularly fiery for a lot of my clients lately. The nutrition and wellness landscape right now is a hot mess and a lot of my clients are feeling really confused and conflicted and anxious about weight loss drugs being on the market and all of these different people shouting at us about how we should be keto or we should be vegan or blah, blah, blah. And I really was holding a lot of space for a lot of people still recovering from my own jet lag, still moving into my own apartment. And at the end of the day, I just, it would have been so nice to just flop into a partner. It would have been so nice to just be held, to just have a little bit of space, to be a little bit like nurtured and nourished by someone. But that was not a possibility for me. That was not accessible for me on Thursday night. And so I sat on my bed for a moment towards the end of the workday, put on my coziest robe, put on my most soothing face mask and asked myself, what do I actually really need right now?
And I kind of thought about the people who support me the most in my life and the different things that they do for me. I thought about my best friend, Nicole, and how she always affirms what a good job I'm doing in my business. How she always affirms that the work I do with my clients is really important. And so I took a moment to affirm honestly to myself that I was doing a good job and that the work I do with my clients is really important. Even if I felt like I didn't show up perfectly on Thursday, even if I didn't feel like I solved all their problems, that's not the point. The point is that I showed up and I showed up with purpose and I am sitting in a job right now and I'm working a job right now that I feel deep purpose in. And so the first thing that I did was put my hands on my heart and remind myself that I am, and I'm doing a good job, the best I could.
I thought about my younger brother and I thought about how he makes me laugh to no end. That is my favorite part about being with him. And I decided to watch some funny videos, have a few comedians on Instagram that are my faves and I made it a mission to go on Instagram open Instagram and not get distracted by whatever else is in my feed and search for one comedian specifically and watch a few of his reels and just tap into a lighter comedic energy. This was very helpful. And then I decided that I just didn't want to cook. And I ordered Uber Eats for myself and I ate Uber Eats. And I ate that meal slowly while I listened to music, a playlist that my personal breathwork teacher, Lindsay, sent me called Soothe My Nervous System. So I listened to a playlist and I ate a nice meal and a lot of the loneliness dissolved.
And then it was time for me to go to bed, getting closer towards my bedtime. And because I was still a little jet lagged, I was kind of having a hard time winding down, because it was still 5 PM New York time in my brain. And I'm laying in my bed and I'm just feeling like I'm still kind of sitting in the fireiness of loneliness. And look, I could have called someone on the phone. I probably could have found someone to speak to, but I felt like it was the kind of loneliness that I actually did just need to sit in and I actually did need to learn from. I had a little bit of a realization about loneliness in that moment. Loneliness is evidence that you know the power of love and relationships. Loneliness is evidence that you know the opposite is true. Loneliness is evidence that you know things like could be better than they are right now. I kind of just leaned into the possibility of how one day I probably will live with a partner and a family because that's something that I deeply desire and I'm going to start dating with intention and I deeply desire to have kids one day and that's something that I believe is really possible and probable for me. And one day the older version of me is going to be looking at this time that I had alone in my apartment in Lisbon and saying, wow, I loved that part. And I don't want to miss this part. And I found myself kind of oscillating between, okay, that's really beautiful that one day it won't be like this. And the fact that I do feel this loneliness is evidence that I believe in a better future for myself.
I also just felt really sad. And I did feel like...wow, how is it, how is it that I still don't have a partner? How is it that I feel like I know myself so well and I've been all over the world and have given so many people a fair shot and I'm still here and I'm still alone. How is it this way? I just had to feel that. The reframes could only do so much to save me from the grief of loneliness. I don't only feel lonely because I'm single. I also sometimes feel lonely because I do have a pretty separated family unit. I have, you know, a mom and a dad and two brothers, but the five of us do kind of live on our own islands in a lot of ways. My parents are not together and my older brother lives in Miami, my younger brother lives in Brooklyn. I'm really close with my brothers and I can call them when I need them, but we aren't that much of a unit. Logistically, I mean, I live in Lisbon, Portugal now, and logistically, we can't physically be together that much. And we are very independent people. I feel the grief of that. I feel the grief of having a...My parents' marriage was very dysfunctional and their separation and divorce was very dramatic. And there's a rupture in my family that I'm still grieving. And I am kind of out here on my own. And in a lot of ways, I've chosen to be on my own. If I wanted to attach to one of my family members, I probably could, but I knew that that wasn't really authentic to me.
And so I've chosen the path that is most authentic to me. And fortunately, the path that is most authentic to me has allowed me to live a life beyond my wildest dreams that has involved traveling all over the world and exploring so many different countries and counseling beautiful and amazing clients from all over the world while I do it. And unfortunately, this life that I've chosen for myself has been wildly independent, wildly independent. And that's and the lack of a unit to return to is something that I have to grieve.
Grief comes with many layers. It comes with sadness. It comes with anger. It comes with loneliness. It comes with isolation. It comes with bargaining. It comes with denial. You know, if you're familiar with the stages of grief, like all of that stuff is wrapped up in there and it's hard to feel, but there is so much wisdom in letting yourself feel the grief. So much wisdom comes from sitting in the shit. So much wisdom comes from sitting in the suck, as my mentor Briana Campos says. The point of the grief is the grief. The point of the grief is not putting a silver lining on the grief and being like, oh, but it's okay. And I did offer that reframe. I have a million reframes and a million perspective shifts that I do believe and I can use. And sometimes it's just about being in the feelings, sitting in them, so that you can garner wisdom from these emotions. Some of the wisdom that I've gotten from letting myself sit in the sadness and isolation and anger of grief is that I'm able to feel really, really deep compassion for other people.
You know, compassion isn't just something we think. We don't think, oh, I feel so bad for that person. Compassion is something that we feel. We feel it in our bodies. We're like, oh, I feel for that person. Because I've sat with my own loneliness and my own sadness, my own grief so much, I am able to feel this somatic, bodily compassion for other people. And I'm so grateful for that. I think that sitting in my own grief and my own loneliness sometimes makes me a better counselor. Another form of wisdom that we garner from deep, difficult emotions is that we get deeper access to the other side of the coin. If we let ourselves feel deep sadness, the level of deep happiness that we're able to access on the other side of it is so much greater. If we let ourselves sit in deep loneliness, the deep appreciation and full body presence that we're able to feel when we're finally connected to another human again is unmatched. Being in the depths gives you access to the other side in a way that you really wouldn't be able to experience if you didn't let yourself go all the way into the pain every once in a while.
And the last piece of, and one last piece of wisdom that I think I get from just letting myself sit in it sometimes is being able to recognize that it's temporary and it goes away. And I've actually talked about this on the podcast briefly before. When loneliness starts to creep in and it wants to spend the night with me, if I really let myself feel it and lean into it, even if it's hard, I wake up the next morning and it's gone. The less I resist it, the less it persists. The less I resist it, the much more temporary and fleeting it is. I wake up the next morning and I just feel refreshed and brand new and on the other side of it and knowing and having that experience of the temporariness, the temporality of that emotion and knowing that it really does go away if I just let myself feel it and lean into it, it really does release it if I don't push it down. If I don't push it down and let it build up in like a fucking pressure cooker in my body, and I just feel it and I let it move through me and out of me, it's almost beautiful. It's this cathartic thing. It's artful. It's beautiful. It moves through me. It moves out of me. And then it's just, it's gone the next day. It's the weight of that emotion is off because I let myself lean into it and feel it.
And maybe I use comfortable pillows and blankets to help myself feel soothed while I process it. Maybe I use breath work to help myself feel soothed while I process it. Maybe I write in my journal or I create art or I listen to music that helps me get deeper into the emotion to help me process it. You know, we can use tools to soothe while we move through the emotions, but it's so important that we feel them, that we don't rush to put loneliness out a fire every single time we feel it. We validate it and we lean into it. And I'm not saying that I do this every single night, but I do this sometimes when the loneliness creeps in. I trust that there's wisdom in the depth of the emotion.
And then sometimes we simply need other human beings. We are not meant to go through our life entirely alone. And so another important part of my solo traveling and living abroad, being abroad, moving around the world, solo, single lady has been finding community. And I can certainly talk forever about finding community. So I'll just provide three things that have helped me create community along the way while I've been traveling that I think are gonna apply to you, whether you are also traveling and moving abroad or you are just someone who, or someone who's staying put where you are right now. Number one is openness. Openness to becoming friends or developing a connection with absolutely anyone that crosses your path.
I have found friends in the most unexpected circumstances, in the most unexpected ways. I've also found connections for my business in the most unexpected circumstances, in the most unexpected of ways. And there have been moments where I've also been closed off and closed myself to connections that probably could have been really fruitful ones. And so I've learned through both the success and failure, of my ability to be open, that openness is very important, not making assumptions about what kind of people you think you need to be friends with and about where you think you need to meet your friends. And when I say stay open, I mean stay open to talking to a person that's sitting next to you at a restaurant. Stay open to talking to the person at the check-in desk at your yoga class. Stay open to talking to someone who's a little bit older than you. Stay open to talking to someone who's a little bit younger than you. Stay open to using cheesy apps like BumbleBFF. Stay open to your first impression of someone being wrong. Stay open to the connections that you already have and asking, hey, do you know anyone else in this city that I might be friends with? Can you connect me with other people who live in that place you used to live? Stay open to asking for connections of all kinds.
Trust that you don't know how the story is gonna go when it comes to your friendships and your relational life and your community. The people who are my closest friends here in Lisbon dropped into my orbit in probably the most unconventional of ways. The person who got me the apartment that I live in right now is someone who came up to me at the end of a sound bath meditation that I went to on a Friday night. It was a Friday night in December and out of desperation, I went to a sound bath meditation because I was having a very difficult week. I had just told my family members that I was not going to come home for Christmas. And my younger brother, especially, was very sad about it. And I had a really difficult conversation with him, but told him that this was what I needed to do for my mental health. I'm very close with my brother. It was very sad. And I had also had really especially difficult client sessions. And I was just like, I got to go to the sound bath. I went to this random sound bath. At the end of the sound bath, a guy approached me and was like, hey, how was your experience? And I was like, honestly, it was amazing. It was so much better than any other sound bath I've ever been to. Normally I kind of just fall asleep in the sound bath, but this one felt very meditative and almost like a trip and it was awesome. And he was like, oh yeah, we were talking for like a minute after that. And he out of nowhere is like, do you happen to be working looking for an apartment when you come back from Ecuador on March 1st? And I was like, yes, yes, I am. And within 48 hours, this apartment that I'm sitting in right now, that I am living in right now, that I am moved into right now, was confirmed.
And I think about how easy it would have been to have been closed off to the connection because I was tired and it was a Friday night and I was just kind of shuffling my way out of the yoga studio and I didn't need to talk to anybody after the meditation. It was 8 pm on a Friday in December. I was freezing and tired and I had just come out of a meditation, but I stayed, stayed open, stayed open to a random connection and it changed my life. So that's certainly number one, is staying open.
Number two is staying in touch. And I have talked about this on episodes before, but I do pretty frequently take inventory of my friends. Sometimes I write down in a note in my phone, a list of people that I want to make sure that I'm staying connected to. And I consciously will drop the ones that I haven't spoken to in a long time, a quick text or a DM of something funny on Instagram or an audio note and really just consciously try to keep in touch. And I try to keep in touch in the most sincere and authentic and genuine way that I possibly can. Pretty frequently, I will say to someone, hey, I was just thinking of you because we haven't spoken in a long time. I don't really have that much time to talk right now or this week or maybe even this month, depending on the circumstances. And so I just want to let you know that I really am thinking of you. If there's anything big going on with you, please let me know. Please drop me an audio note. I'd love to hear it. And let's make sure we catch up in real time. Like we see each other if they live in the same city as me or we schedule a phone call in the next couple of weeks. You know, you don't have to have all, you really can be honest with people about where you're at of being able to talk and being able to hang out and being able to have a deep, thorough catch up. If you really do have a lot going on in your life right now, you literally can tell people that and you literally can say, hey, I'm dropping this text right now. You might not get a response if you answer me again for like another 10 days or whatever.
The people who want to have you in their life, the people who love you, the people who understand you, the people who want to stay connected with you are going to meet you where you're at. They're going to accept you where you're at. And if you are honest with yourself, if you meet yourself where you're at, other people can meet you where you're at and they can be like, oh yeah, it's okay. We don't have to chat for five hours, but thanks for letting me know that you're thinking of me.
And the third thing I want to share about creating connections is remember that you're doing something really kind when you ask for support. I think that a lot of people have this misconception that when they ask for support, they're putting a burden on another human being. There are circumstances where maybe people over ask for support and they do legitimately put burdens on their friends and their friends do need to set boundaries with them. More often than not, the people who are worried about being a burden are the people who are not actually a burden and need to remember that it is actually a really kind thing to let someone into your world and to say, hey, do you have five minutes to talk? Are you available to come to the hospital right now? I need support. Are you available to get coffee on Friday morning? I feel like I just have to vent to someone. Are you available to connect about this one topic? Because I've been struggling with this and you're someone I think of that's like really good at this. Remember that it's a privilege to let someone into your world.
I really do believe that we need to normalize saying, I'm struggling right now. My partner and I are struggling right now. I'm struggling with my kid right now. I'm struggling with my relationship with food right now. I'm struggling with my relationship with my body right now. Not to everyone. You don't have to say this to like the barista. You don't have to say this to everyone that you meet when you walk down the street. Say it to your friends though. Say it to your family. Say it to people that you want to cultivate deep connections with. Say it to people that you hope would also say it to you if they needed to express their needs. Remember that it is a kind thing when you invite someone into your world and let them know what you’re feeling challenged by and let them know what you need.
All right. That was today's espresso shot of a reflection on loneliness and making connections. I certainly can do another episode where I talk about the logistics of traveling and being a nomad and moving abroad and all of those things, but I felt inspired and called to share a little bit more about that question that I got the most. Thank you all for being vulnerable enough to ask me, do you feel alone and does that scare you? The answer is yes and my loneliness and my fear aren't necessarily bad things. They're very human things about me and I've learned a lot from them. And I believe I've cultivated deep compassion for other people from them. And I've learned a lot about holding space for myself and taking care of myself and showing up for myself and being compassionate for myself amidst all of this. And I'm ultimately really grateful for this time that I've had alone.
Wherever you are today, I hope that you have a really peaceful rest of your day. I hope you could take another moment of silence. Maybe you set a timer for three minutes after you turn off this podcast and just sit in silence and meet yourself where you're at. I'll be back here next week with a guest back on the interview grind tomorrow. Actually, I have three podcast interviews that I'm recording and until then, reach out to me with questions, with thoughts, with reflections, with feedback that you have about this show or with questions about the Nutrition & Intuition retreat. Would love to have you join us. And if you enjoyed this show, please leave a five star rating on Apple or on Spotify, wherever you stream this podcast. It really helps more people find the show, the more ratings we have. I deeply appreciate your five-star rating. I deeply appreciate the time that you take to do that. Have a peaceful rest of your week. I'll be back soon.