Daily Nourishment for December 23, 2024: Feel Less Lonely During the Holidays
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 60 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
Most people struggle with loneliness during all times of the year, but the holidays can be extra difficult for various reasons.
Pause.
Prepare and sip a warm beverage.
Learn more about why this helps in Chapter 13 of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other.
“Our social experiences are not always separate from our bodily experiences. In other words, we feel in our bodies what we experience in our relationships. It's as if our bodies are thermometers, registering in bone and skin and muscle the temperature of our lives and the condition of our inclusion.”
—The Great Belonging
Prompt.
Conduct a Quick Belonging Checkup.
“The things that offer me the greatest relief from loneliness are also the things that bring me into the moment, and remind me of my senses. My children’s laughter. Petting my puppy. Listening to birdsong in the woods. Baking.”—Natalie Eve Garrett
Additional Resources: Read more from Garrett in the Lit Hub interview, “How the Pandemic Has Changed the Way We Think About Solitude and Loneliness.”
Practice.
Listen to music that helps you feel less alone and make a playlist to return to over the next several days. Learn more about why this helps in Chapter 35 of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other.
“Sarah Vaughan singing ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ feels like the touch of worn cotton; a rotation of old T-shirts my mother wears when she’s cooking… And when I hear Mingus’s ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’—that pendulous elegy, sad but sleuthing, like a gloomy gumshoe’s anthem—I smell my father’s plaid shirt. Its collar has since lost its stiff. One button snaps with less snap! It hangs in my closet in Brooklyn, sharing a hanger with two other shirts—an indignity I should fix.” — Durga Chew Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood
If you like, take a few minutes to write about how music helps you belong.
Additional Resources: “How Can Music Engagement Address Loneliness?” by Frederic Kiernan and Jane W. Davidson, International Journal of Environmental Research and Mental Health
Want More?
Read Forty Ways to Feel Less Lonely During the Holidays (or Any Time)
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Resources, Workshops, & Gatherings:
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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