Reframing my solitary nature as a strength would take years as I learned to fight for my right to solitude.
One example of many: in college, when I tried dating for the first time, I realized how quickly a man could feel threatened by and mistrusting of a girl who wants alone time. How easily he would label that solitary woman as selfish.
Once I embraced solitude fully, though, I felt like my life could finally begin.
THE POLITICS OF SOLITUDE
What if I told you that solitude’s barriers to entry make it a women’s rights issue, a mental health issue, a social justice issue?
What if I told you that power dynamics on institutional and individual levels are dictating who gets access to solitude, when, and how?
What if I told you that solitude is an increasingly limited resource, an exotic bird on the verge of extinction, threatened by variables like environmental crises and the housing market?
Solitude is an evolving ecosystem affected by everything from policies to overpopulation. It’s all of the above; it’s everything and more.
And yet: we can still have a say.
SOLITUDE ADVOCACY IN ACTION
When my Google search for the phrase “solitude advocacy” came back empty, I knew it was time to change that.
Here’s a new (working) definition of solitude advocacy: the act of supporting, recommending, or representing the right to solitude.
In action, this work of a solitude advocate (an advosolocate?) could take many forms:
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- raising awareness by highlighting solitude-related projects and the people behind them
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- identifying who can benefit from more solitude and how
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- increasing access to solitude through resources, programs, technology, policy reforms
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- building momentum for structural/cultural advancements that improve our collective approach to solitude
WHY ME?
My life has been one long string of solitary experiences.
- I was a homeschooled middle child who excelled at hiding on our roof and in our garden.
- As a loner who delayed dating until college, I was caught off guard by my first relationship, in which I was being denied the right to my personal space—whether that space be physical, mental, or emotional.
- I completed a low-residency (aka primarily remote) MFA in Writing program.
- I’ve chosen to live alone, which has strengthened my latest romantic relationship of 7+ years.
- I’ve been working remotely for 5+ years.
- My memoir manuscript—The Inner Elsewhere—is deeply steeped in solitude.
I cannot stop writing, talking, and thinking about solitude, including its adjacent phrases (alone time, personal space, introversion, distance, privacy, independence . . .).
WHY NOW?
This decade has been defined, in part, by a COVID era which tested our collective capacity for solitude. When forced to stay home and isolate from others, some of us were surprised at how much we thrived. Maybe others had been cut off from solitude for too long, so they no longer remembered how to function within it. Collectively, we were learning how to live and to love from a distance, and we can still benefit from that practice.
WHAT NEXT?
I look forward to researching, sharing, and unpacking solitary content with you—whether practices that have helped me (like “peripheral solitude” or “half & half solitude”) or developments elsewhere (like Finland’s single-person benches, or apps making it safer for women to travel solo).
Time to reimagine what a solitude-friendly world could be. Care to join me?
