Being Alone Is a Skill Worth Learning
What Empty Nest Taught Me About Being Alone
I love this scene. Rain on the window. Leaves falling. A warm mug. An open book. Nobody asking anything of you.
This isn’t a picture of loneliness. This is a masterclass in contentment.
We live in a culture that treats solitude like a problem to be solved. Being alone? There must be an app for that.
We’ve turned the thing that could save us into something we think needs saving.
Most of us are awful at being alone because nobody taught us the difference between loneliness and solitude.
Loneliness is feeling empty in your own presence. Solitude is feeling full.
That cozy window setup? That’s someone who figured out something most of us are still learning. You can enjoy your own company without apologizing for it. Without explaining it. Without posting it online for validation.
When is the last time you sat somewhere beautiful without grabbing your phone to capture it? When did you last think your own thoughts without critiquing them or adding them to your mental to-do list?
Being good at being alone changes everything.
You stop doing things just because they look good to other people. You leave situations that drain you instead of white-knuckling through them because being alone feels scarier.
You realize your thoughts are actually interesting when you give them room to exist.
The person who set up that little moment by the window knows something we often forget.
You can create your own comfort. You don’t have to wait for it.
You can build your own pocket of contentment and step into it like a cozy sweater.
That’s owning your life. The ability to be your own source of comfort, entertainment, and companionship.
How you treat yourself becomes the blueprint for how others treat you. If you can’t stand being with yourself, you’ll spend your whole life trying to get that feeling from everyone else. And that’s exhausting for everyone.
Try this.
Create your own version of that window scene. Coffee on your porch in the morning. Tea and your journal at night. Sitting in your parked car watching the world go by.
Where doesn’t matter. What matters is giving yourself permission to just be. No agenda. No productivity. No phone. Just you, being present with yourself.
You might discover something surprising: you’re actually pretty good company.
What’s your favorite way to spend time with just you?
I was an only child until about the age of nine when my parents unexpectedly got pregnant, and I ended up with little twin brothers who were more like children to me than my siblings.
I was so lonely all of those years...we lived in the country, very isolated and I remember crying from the loneliness of it all. My best friend in the world was my German Shepherd, Snoopy, who had been with me since I was two and I spent most of my time in nature with him or reading alone.
As an adult now I realize those years were so incredibly important, though difficult for me at the time. They created a space inside me that now I take with me everywhere I go in the concrete jungles That I work and live in.
Thank you for sharing this. I do hope everyone can find that stillness within them no matter where they are.
Reading your words felt like slipping into a warm, familiar place in myself — the place that remembers how sacred it is to simply be with one’s own presence. The way you describe solitude is a gentle recalibration, a reminder that stillness isn’t a void but a kind of inner hearth.
I love how you name the difference between loneliness and solitude with such clarity. Loneliness is an ache. Solitude is an anchoring. And most of us were never taught how to feel the difference — or that the quiet fullness of our own company is something we can cultivate, protect, even cherish.
Your reflection feels like permission to return to ourselves without apology. To slow down enough to hear the softer truths. To create that window-scene moment not as an aesthetic, but as a practice of remembering our own enough-ness.
What you wrote touches the part of me that knows how healing it is to stop performing and simply inhabit my own life — mug in hand, rain at the window, no one needing anything from me. A moment where the world gets quiet enough that I can hear myself again.
Thank you for naming this so beautifully. For reminding us that presence is not something we capture, but something we enter. And that when we learn to enjoy our own company, we stop abandoning ourselves for the approval of others.
Your words feel like a deep breath. A small, sacred homecoming.