In last month’s newsletter, I wrote that September would require us to discern our truths, our beliefs about ourselves. I called it ‘pruning season’. And what can I say, it certainly had me working overtime.

After spending the last six months mainly going for walks and being at home, I suddenly spent three to four days a week at the office befriending new colleagues and commuting on a packed train each morning and evening. Alongside that, I also started a one-year counseling course. In short: I met heaps of new people, most of them my age or a bit older, and the more people I met, the more it dawned on me that I was the only one among them who, at thirty-nine, was not yet partnered.

In these kinds of social situations, people will sometimes try and find out about my relationship status in a circuitous way (‘Do you live alone?’ is a popular question). But in most cases, they don’t ask about my private life at all, which is both respectful of them and brings on a particular loneliness inside me: while their partners and lovers and (sometimes) children come alive in our conversation through my questions, the friends, family members and animals (the dog! Just the dog, really) that are the loves of my life remain at the periphery, unmentioned. It’s almost as if they don’t really count.

So, as September rolled in with its sudden abundance of small talk, it wasn’t long before I felt a familiar shame creep up, a refrain of haunting questions: What was wrong with me? Why did I choose to live this way? I’m sure plenty of people can relate to this experience. Though my shame is certainly gendered, I think many of us know this painful lack of belonging, this sense that we don’t quite fit with what society has deemed acceptable.

I want to the careful with proposing a fix at this point, or even a structural analysis. I could certainly recite the slogans (smash the patriarchy! down with heteronormativity!) but if I learned anything this month, it’s that saying the truth out loud is sometimes more than enough. It has a way of freeing you. It has a way of creating a space that wasn’t there before.

I find that if I peel away other peoples’ pity about my singlehood (often expressed kindly as: ‘I’m sure you’ll find someone’) and my self-pity (often expressed unkindly as: ‘I’ll never find someone’), my vision changes, becomes more expansive. I once again see all the gorgeous humans in my life (and the dog, of course) who love me with such faithfulness and care. I find that it’s ultimately my choice if I want to use these people as proof of my worthiness (see! I am loved!) or if I simply allow myself to be grateful for what they bring me, and what they ask of me. If I peel the layers back further, I begin to see my beautiful sovereignty, and all the things I was able to create because of it. And I also see my longing, shimmering there at the edges: what might I be able to do and create if I entered into a partnership? How might I be asked to change and grow?

‘All truth is a paradox,’ the writer Anne Lamott once said. I take this to mean: if we open up the kaleidoscope, if we get curious about ourselves, we discover that several things are always true at once, even if they seemingly oppose each other. It’s very annoying. But also, perhaps, the more I allow for the ‘both/and’ inside myself, the more I am able to imagine other people in their complexity, their contradictions: The way almost everyone harbors both a loneliness and so much hidden beauty. What is yours, I want to ask. What is yours?

But for now: Are you ready for October? That’s alright, me neither. Just know that, this Wednesday, on October 1^st, we have a really sweet square (they exist!) between Mercury in Libra and Jupiter in Cancer. It’s such a good day to notice where you’ve held back or where you played small in your communications, and there’s so much support for speaking your truth in a way that is both generous and caring.

I hope you try that, even if you only speak a truth out loud to yourself and no one else. Just sit with it for a little while. There’s no rush.

Further Reading

‘All about Love: New Visions’ (Harper, 1999) by writer, theorist and educator bell hooks is a great resource to broaden your perspective on the subject of love, and to think about it both through a personal and a political lens.