We're not a category. We're people.

And we deserve so much more than what the retirement industry tells us we need.

Recently while watching a YouTube video I heard a a statement that stopped me in my tracks.

He said: Isolation is devastating for older people.

Just like that. No qualifiers. No distinctions. No nuance. A broad declaration handed out as though it applied equally to every person over sixty.

And I found myself pushing back.

Not because I think human connection isn’t important. It is. Not because I think loneliness is healthy. It isn’t. But because we’ve developed a habit of treating very different experiences as if they’re the same thing.

Loneliness is not the same thing as solitude. Living alone is not the same thing as being disconnected. Enjoying your own company is not the same thing as being abandoned.

Those distinctions matter. A lot. And if you’ve ever felt a flicker of guilt for liking your own company a little too much, I suspect this one is for you. Judging from the hundreds of comments in reaction to my notes about this, I believe there are many who are troubled by this broad generalization.

Researchers who study aging have actually been making this distinction for years.

Living alone is a circumstance. Loneliness is an experience.

You can live by yourself and feel deeply connected to your life. You can also sit at a crowded dinner table and feel completely invisible.

Studies on aging have also found something else worth sitting with: older adults often spend more time alone than younger adults, yet many report maintaining high levels of well-being. Solitude itself doesn’t automatically create suffering. Some people genuinely prefer more time alone. They aren’t lonely. They aren’t withdrawn. They aren’t in trouble. They’re simply comfortable in their own company.

That feels like a conversation we don’t have nearly often enough.

Because the public message is almost always the same: if you’re alone, something must be wrong. We are bombarded with adverts on all the social media platform alerting to the dangers of living life in soltiude during our

“ golden years”

What if that’s not true? What if you’ve spent years quietly believing there was something wrong with you, when really you were just built a little differently than the people loudest about needing constant company? I know I sure don’t want constant company, ack that would be exhausting for me.

For example, I spend a tremendous amount of time alone. I write alone. I paint alone. I drink my morning coffee alone. There are stretches of time when I don’t leave my apartment for days.

To some people, that sounds alarming.

To me, it sounds like Tuesday.

And yet — am I isolated?

I talk with my daughter for two hours. I have coffee on the patio with friends. I meet a neighbor for bourbon on a beautiful evening. I host live discussions. I receive messages from readers asking for my perspective. I spend my days in conversation with thousands of people through my writing.

Am I alone? Frequently.

Am I disconnected? Not at all.

Those are two entirely different conditions. And I suspect if you sat down and actually mapped your own week — really looked at it — you might discover the same thing about yourself.

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of broad statements about what older people supposedly need. Older people need to socialize. Older people need to stay busy.

Do we? Or do some of us?

Because my grandmother lived to ninety years old without the internet, without Zoom, without social media, without a carefully curated network of activities. She wasn’t sitting around worrying about whether she had enough engagement opportunities.

She was living her life.

And that’s what gets lost in these conversations.

Human beings are not wired identically. Some people are energized by crowds. Some people are exhausted by them. Some people need daily interaction. Some people need daily solitude. Some people are lonely in a house full of relatives. Some people are perfectly content spending an afternoon alone with a book, a garden, or their thoughts.

If you recognize yourself in that last sentence, I want you to know — there has never been anything wrong with you.

History is full of people who built extraordinary lives around significant amounts of solitude. Georgia O’Keeffe worked for decades alone in the New Mexico desert, by every account fully at home there. Grandma Moses didn’t begin painting seriously until her late seventies, much of it in quiet, solitary hours.

Their solitude wasn’t a defect. It was simply part of how they lived — and part of what made the work possible.

The danger isn’t solitude.

The danger is assuming everyone should need the same things.

I spent much of my life believing there was something wrong with me because I enjoyed being alone. That the preference itself was evidence of a problem. Something to fix. Something to overcome. Something to apologize for in a culture that treats extroversion as health and solitude as symptom.

Now I wonder if there was never anything wrong at all.

I was simply wired differently. What looked like isolation to someone else looked like peace to me.

And I know that’s the real conversation we need to be having. Not how much social interaction an older person needs. But what kind of life allows this particular person to feel connected, engaged, and alive. My belief in this position is so strong I recorded an impromtu video about it and well, I was a little testy.

( click on the image it will open in Youtube)

Fear of Living Alone?

Because loneliness hurts. No question about it.

But solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. One is the pain of feeling disconnected from yourself and others. The other can be the experience of finally hearing your own thoughts clearly enough to know what you actually want.

This Substack began with the idea of reclaiming the dreams we had in our youth. I’m realizing now how nearly impossible that actually is when our minds stay filled with noise — including, ironically, the constant warnings about the dangers of solitude. You cannot hear an old dream over that kind of static. You cannot recognize a forgotten thread of yourself while being told, day after day, that being alone with your own thoughts is a problem waiting to happen.

I consider solitude at this stage of my life a gift. It’s how I’ve actually been able to hear my own dreams again. Feel them. Remember them. And — more than I expected — bring quite a few of them into my present life.

Those answers are going to be different for every one of us. If yours looks like long quiet mornings and short, meaningful conversations rather than a packed calendar, that is not a problem to solve. That is simply who you are.

And I think that’s a much more interesting conversation than another sweeping declaration about what all older people supposedly need.

Because we’re not a category.

We’re people.

If this piece gave you permission to stop apologizing for the quiet life that actually fits you, I’d love for you to bring it to Tuesday.

The Breakthrough Circle gathers every week on Zoom — and for a limited time, I’m offering 20% off an annual membership. Not because solitude needs fixing. Because some conversations are better when you don’t have to have them alone.

Come as you are. The door is open.

Join The Breakthrough Circle — 20% off annual membership

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She’s out there. Help me find her.