From Vulnerability To Connection

Guest blog by Ella Baker, founder of The Loneliness Movement, a 2,500+ member in-person women’s community in Guelph, Canada. Drawing from her own experience of long-term loneliness after moving from England, her work focuses on turning awareness into real-life connection. Follow her on Instagram @thelonelinessmovement.

My relationship with loneliness has been a lifelong journey. Growing up I always felt as though I didn’t belong, so when I fell in love with a Canadian and moved from England to Canada leaving all my family behind, I thought I would finally find a place of belonging.

But life doesn’t always work out the way we had hoped, and I once again found myself feeling isolated and lonely after the marriage ended. I made the decision to stay in Canada and raise our children here, but without any family or support network, I found the social isolation and loneliness increased as each year went by.

Not everyone reading this will have gone through a divorce, but most people have experienced a major life change and it’s within these shifts in our lives that loneliness can become more prevalent.

I found myself longing for the life that no longer existed, and as each year went by, and with each Christmas Day that I would have to eat my dinner alone while my children celebrated with their father, I found the feeling and ache inside me grow and become more intense.

These feelings are what it means to be human, yet it is very rarely spoken of. To admit to being lonely brings an air of shame and a sense as though you have been rejected by society.

But it is not a failure as I once thought it to be. It is a beacon shining light on the aspects of our lives that are unfulfilling. It is the gap between our desire for connection and the quality of those connections, which often leaves us feeling invisible.

As the years went by, I realized that I had to go outside of my comfort zone if I were to ever find a support network, and nothing was going to change unless I created something myself.

Social media has in part been sighted as a contributing factor to the loneliness epidemic, but I believe, and have proven, when used as the tool it was created for it can become your best ally in finding friends and building deep social connections.

I decided to post on a local Facebook group asking if there were any women in the area looking for friends. I immediately had a handful of yeses and now the group has grown to 2600+ members.

Through that process I began to understand what helps people move from loneliness into real connection, and there were a few simple things that made the biggest difference when creating something like this:

• Thinking about the kind of community I wanted to create

• Giving the group a name that was clear about its purpose

• Sharing it in spaces where others may already be feeling the same way

• Checking there was genuine interest before building anything

• Keeping the first meetups simple and low pressure so people felt comfortable showing up alone

• Letting members gradually take ownership by suggesting their own meetups and ideas

• Keeping the group focused by only allowing posts for introductions and in-person meetups, no business promotion, memes, or online debates creates a clean, intentional environment

What I have learnt through building something that I was looking for was that loneliness does not mean that something is wrong with you; it just means that something is missing.

The moment I was honest with myself and others about my need for more in-person friendships, it gave people the courage to be vulnerable too. And from that vulnerability, real deep connections are able to grow naturally.