Hope Comes to Visit
Hope Comes to Visit is a soulful podcast that holds space for real stories, honest conversations, and the kind of moments that remind us we’re never alone.
Hosted by author, speaker, and former TV journalist-turned-storyteller Danielle Elliott Smith, the show explores the full spectrum of the human experience — from the tender to the triumphant. Through powerful interviews and reflective storytelling, each episode offers light, connection, and presence for anyone navigating the in-between.
Whether you’re grieving, growing, beginning again, or simply craving something real, Hope Comes to Visit will meet you right where you are — with warmth, grace, and the quiet belief that even in the dark, transformation can take root.
New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin your week with a little light, reflection, and hope.
Hope Comes to Visit
From Silent Suffering to Solid Support: Lucy Rose on Healing Chronic Loneliness
Some seasons of my life, loneliness wasn’t a passing mood—it was the air I breathed. I didn’t always call it by name, but my body did: tight chest, racing thoughts, that sense of being “with people” and still feeling alone. In this conversation, I sit down with Lucy Rose, founder of The Cost of Loneliness Project, to talk honestly about what chronic loneliness does to us—and how we can gently stitch connection back into our days.
We weave together science and story: cortisol and inflammation, yes—but also travel schedules that hollow you out, the “life quakes” that upend everything, and the small, human habits that actually help. If you’ve ever felt unseen in a crowded room (hi, same), this one’s for you.
What we get into:
- Chronic vs. passing lonely: how to tell when it’s a blue day…and when it’s a pattern your body is carrying.
- Stress biology, plainly: why loneliness spikes cortisol, chips away at immunity, and raises risks for heart disease—and possibly dementia.
- Gendered patterns: how many women and men are socialized to buffer loneliness differently (and what to do about it).
- Free connection practices: ask better questions, listen longer, volunteer shoulder-to-shoulder, check on one person today.
- For kids & teens: signs teachers/parents can watch for—and simple ways to bring a child back into the circle.
- Hope with boundaries: when hope fuels healing…and when it keeps us stuck in something that isn’t changing.
If this meets you where you are, share it with someone who might need the language—and the nudge—to reconnect. And as always, I’m glad you’re here.
Connect with Lucy Rose and learn more about the Cost of Loneliness Project.
Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review - it helps others find their way to these conversations.
New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin your week with a little light and a lot of hope.
For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit
I've had what I might call a life quake, and I'm quite sure I did not coin that term. I don't know where it came from, so I can't give credit to anyone. But you know, a number of things kind of happened at the same time from death of a mom to, you know, um moving to my kids moving away to being diagnosed with breast cancer, all kinds of things happen simultaneously. And you realize in those moments just how important hope is to go where you are. Because it is that hope, I think, that says, yes, I can, and there is a light here.
SPEAKER_02:Hi, friends, I'm Danielle Elliott Smith, and this is Hope Comes to Visit. Here on the podcast, we listen deeply, learn boldly, and try to leave with one small step. Our guest today is here to talk to us about something so many of us have felt: loneliness. She calls it a silent public health crisis. Lucy Rose is the founder and president of the Cost of Loneliness Project. Lucy's Lucy's pronouns are she, her, and hers. Lucy, I'm so delighted to have you here. I am loneliness is something I have felt many, many times in my life. And I don't know that I have ever can recognized it as a public health crisis, but I certainly know that it's something so many people have felt at one time or another. And I'm delighted to have you here to talk about it. How are you today?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for asking. Just the start of that is a lovely way to help dispel loneliness, isn't it? Thank you. Um, I'm doing very well. Thank you. And thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_02:What made you decide to start a project like this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I was actually walking around the periphery of Central Park with my daughter. And I was at a certain age in life and a certain stage, and have had a really great fun time in my career and doing what I do. And I just, it just really occurred to me, I really wanted to do something in addition to what I was doing. There was something else in life I needed to do and give back. And as I started thinking what that was, um, I realized I was lonely, Danielle, and how is it impacting me? And then the more I thought about that, the more research I did, the more I realized what a huge, as you say, public health crisis it really is. And at that time, eight years ago, when I first started this, it wasn't in the news. You weren't hearing the Today Show folks talk about loneliness or any of that like we do today. It was very quiet. Um, but I so I started doing research and I realized that was for me, and there's no religious intent overtone here at all, but almost like a calling. It was something that I had to do was to bring this to the forefront and see if we can't do something about demystifying this, making it okay to talk about, um, and then helping folks hold their hand, helping them come back to a place where they feel heard, which, as you know, was your your work. Um, being heard is that first step in healing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. What a beautiful, and and I believe that we are called to do certain things. I believe that much like I'm doing work that I know I'm supposed to be doing, right? So well, let's talk a little bit about your background, right? So this is uh a little bit of a departure, but also in your wheelhouse. So um yeah, what had you been doing up to this point?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is a bit of a departure, and it is also consistent. You're absolutely right. I've been working in the public health arena my entire professional life. I'm actually a physician assistant by training as well, so I do have a clinical background, but I will preface this by saying I am not a therapist. So anything that we talk about today could even come close to sounding to anyone like that might be the case, it's not true. Um, I've just had the same lived experiences everyone else has, and I'm delighted to share what I've learned. Um, but yes, I have had my own business now for 25 years, I think this year. Um I worked at the FEDA Drug Administration for a while in my life, um, running the group there that regulates advertising, promotion, prescription drugs. But for this, more importantly, I think was head of communications for F for a part of FDA for a number of years. Um then I've run this business for a long time, working in public health, really, trying to ensure that all the ways that pharmaceutical companies, as an example, promote their prescription drugs are truthful and not misleading, so that your healthcare providers and you get the information you need to best use those products. Um it's kept me very involved in thinking about public health and being a part of that ecosystem that says, how can we help people live a healthier, happier life?
SPEAKER_02:So one of my ethos for the longest time has always been, how can I help? Um, when I was working in the recovery space, I would answer my phone, how can I help? Uh, because I think that that very simple sentence allows people to feel as though they can share and that you are someone who wants to make a difference in some capacity. When you realized that this place of loneliness was something you wanted to dive into, yeah. Was it a surprise when you started to uncover some of the statistics?
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, let me back up just one second because I think this is relevant to that question. Um, yes, it was a surprise. A shock was a surprise how many people in this country self-report that they're experiencing chronic loneliness. And that's what this is really about, not the situational loneliness that you feel when you're a young person going to a dance, standing in the corner, and you go, oh my gosh, I'm so lonely tonight. My friend didn't come with me. But a chronic feeling of I don't have what I need in terms of supporting me emotionally and what that is. But my loneliness actually came from traveling all the time. Right. Six days a week for 20 years. I was on the road. You're looking at someone with um 8 million Marriott points and 5 million United Miles as an example, who's on the road all the time. And no time to really build those foundational relationships that are necessary to help mitigate the loneliness. Um, so I it's a real lived experience for me. And it caused every it caused physical ramifications and all kinds of other things for me. But yes, I was shocked at the numbers of people that self-report that they are chronically lonely and the impact that that makes on their life as I started doing that research. Because the impact was huge.
SPEAKER_02:So, what is that impact? What does that impact typically look like? Because I've I've been doing a lot of research lately on what on what a system we have, right? On how interconnected we are in terms of our body responding to outside stimuli and and environmental issues and and why we get depressed or anxious or our muscles get tight, depending on what's happening. You know, recognizing in my older age how truly phenomenal our bodies are and what I can be doing to better serve myself, right? So recognizing how loneliness could potentially affect you physically or in in what other capacities it could. So, what did you learn?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've learned a lot, and I continue to learn every day. Uh, right now, I just dived in yesterday to a new book, for me at least, called The Biology of Trauma by Amy Apijin, which is an amazing look inside what happens to all of us as we respond to trauma of any sort uh from a physiological perspective. But basically, let's just take this to the highest level. When we have any kind of stress, and of course, loneliness is a form of chronic stress when you have it chronically. Anytime we do, our body releases hormones. We've all heard of those. The most important one in this case is one called cortisol. And it's that hormone that says, oh my gosh, I'm scared to death. How fast can I run? And your heart beats faster and your blood pressure goes up and you breathe faster, and it gives you that ability to do different things to respond to fear or to, in this case, um loneliness or stress. Um, as the hormone comes out, that's it's really important if you're in a situation, that's an acute situation you need to run from. It's not good for you if it chronically bathes your cells with this hormone so that you're constantly on notice, in essence. And this can cause an immunological response that lowers your ability to fight infection, as an example. That also over time can actually, and there's causality here, not just correlation, can cause cancer. And we believe that the inflammation may also have an impact on causing dementia over time. We know that it causes heart disease. And the other thing it often causes is folks, Daniel, go into a soothing need because you're you're chronically there. You know, I think of the golden girls and them eating their ice cream at night, you know, and all of that from stress. Um, as we do that, the other things that it can cause can be mental, can be things like uh turning to drinking or other kinds of drugs or overeating or whatever it may be, all of which also then can add to those physiological issues that can be damaging to all of us.
SPEAKER_02:That makes me think. I mean, when you said the dementia piece made me think that there must be, and again, I'm not a doctor clearly, but there I have seen studies that relate to length of life and friendships, right? Like people who have friendships and and are out and social tend to live longer than people who are alone or isolate.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, that is absolutely the case. And it's one of those issues that Fox has studied for a long time. And one thing that, you know, it also perhaps plays into some gender differences. And I'm always very careful. I don't like to broad brush anything. Right. But as we think about some of the ways we have been socialized historically, I'm just saying with women perhaps often building more and deeper friendships than what we've encouraged men to do over time, you see a difference there as well. And that's becoming more and more clear, I think, and evident in terms of research. But just as a quick example, it is not uncommon for a woman to have a fairly significant life after her spouse might die, her husband dies. It is very common for the male member of that group, if it's a heterosexual marriage that way, to die much more quickly when their wife does, because they don't have that community, that friendset that's so important to support them again. And that's what really loneliness is. It's not having what you need to support you when you need it. Um, and that's very devastating in so many ways. There's a cost to pay for the individual, there's a cost to pay at the uh community level when folks are lonely and not out and about and doing things, and at our societal level. Um, even in terms of business, there's a productivity cost when people are not there. So all kinds of things happen as a result of this.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so we we've used the word cost a few times. So when we talk about the cost of loneliness project, let's talk about the project itself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, I this project is really designed to do everything we can to do both education, just like we are today, about what loneliness is and why it is important to recognize that, destigmatize that, normalize that, and come up with opportunities to create connections. What do they look like? What do they look like in terms of how we live in community, how we create our cities and build those cities to encourage connections, how we and our towns bring those together, all those things. So what we are trying to do is twofold, really, is to educate people as to what this is and why it's so important, but also to create opportunities for connection and to create awareness, to your point exactly, about how important those connections are to all of us, those friendsets, those people who support us the most, and bring all the folks together as best we can to create awareness about building cultures of community, be it in your own community, be it in your workplace, wherever that is. So that's what we're all about. And there are lots of ways that we're doing that that folks can find actually on our website.
SPEAKER_02:That's fantastic. How can we do that in our communities? What are some of the best ways we can create community if I am an individual who finds myself feeling a little lost, a little like I'm I'm listening now and I'm thinking, okay, this sounds like me. I've I've been feeling lonely. I've I've felt a bit lost and a bit out of place. And I'm wondering what's the first step?
SPEAKER_01:You know, when you asked me a few minutes ago about numbers, um, if there are people feeling right now, gosh, it sounds like me or my grandson or my mom or whomever that may be, you're not alone. Let's just say that first. Um, you know this when I said self-reporting, somewhere between, and this varies depending on which study you're looking at, but somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the adults in this country self-report that they are chronically lonely. Um, that's a huge number. So you're not alone. And I said adults, one of my biggest worries is our children. You know, what do we do at our children? And I I'll go there with our community first right now in terms of identifying that. Because I think one of the issues for me is how can we anticipate someone might become lonely? What does that look like? And how can we build things in to recognize those opportunities and create connections for those people, create social skills that they may need? So, as we look at this, for me as children, now let's just think about that. How do we educate our teachers as to what to look for? What does that look like? Okay, how do they then have the toolkits or what toolkits can we provide those teachers to help them understand what they can do for the children that they do identify and recognize? How do they have those conversations with the parents? You know, and so I think as a community we can come together. I think the physicians in a community and the mental health providers can certainly come together as well and put this as a high priority in all of the interactions of the work they do and education for all of their folks. Ask those questions when you run into when your patients come in or when your clients come in, depending on what you're doing. Um, communities as a whole, okay, the businesses can come together, okay, especially in our world right now, where half of us are hybrid. We don't even have the water cooler anymore. What can they do for all the folks that work for them and with them to help them with connections? And what does that look like? There are lots of ways, I think, if a community pays attention, volunteering. How can we volunteer? Might we have a community Saturday volunteer day where everybody comes out like they do in Rwanda uh one Saturday month and volunteers. And there are lots and lots of opportunities for people to connect and projects they want to work on. Um I think we have to think differently.
SPEAKER_02:I know there are some there are some companies that do things like that. My fiance works for MasterCard, and part of MasterCard's ethos is to encourage volunteerism. I mean, they're there and a number of their employees get time off in order to volunteer, right? So, but if we start, like you were starting to say, if we start with the younger kids, what could a teacher do in a school classroom to encourage or to help a child that seems to be moving towards a if they're recognizing signs of loneliness? Or what are the signs of loneliness that a teacher might recognize?
SPEAKER_01:Teacher might recognize, and again, I think it's really critical to pause just for a second and recognize the fact that loneliness manifests itself differently in each person that feels lonely.
SPEAKER_02:Fair enough.
SPEAKER_01:There's of course not a true one size fits all because it's psychic pain, Danielle. Clearly, what you might see before, I might say no, no, it's a 10, you know, or whatever. I don't know. Um, but how how a teacher might notice is a child withdrawing? Is a child not doing the same kind of work that they're used to doing? So a B student might become a D student. Um, they might not want to join the playground activity, whatever that may be, and be standoffish, or suddenly become quieter. There are all kinds of ways that a teacher, I think, may do it. And of course, they can anticipate it for some. The new kid on the block who just moved into the bizarre doesn't already have those friends. Um, so as you were looking, and the same with parents, as we look at our children, you know, are we seeing anything change in their life? Are they still making those phone calls at night or texting nowadays? I guess it's not the phone call, all their friends when they get home from school and engaged and all of that. Um, and once you do, once you see that, obviously then a teacher can think creatively as to how to bring that person in on their own terms so that they're comfortable. And it's clearly important to differentiate between someone who's just shy and someone who's very lonely as an example. Um how do we bring them into a conversation as an example that you're having in the reading group? How do you move them into the group physically so that they feel comfortable and confident? How do you uh what do you say to them that gives them that feeling of they belong? You know, um, there were schools who set up what they call buddy benches where kids would sit down if they felt like they needed somebody to sit with them and so we love that sit with them. And that, you know, I it it got lots of attention as an example. And I think in in many ways is a wonderful thing. It can, of course, backfire if the other kids don't embrace it and sit down with them. Um so one has to be thoughtful and careful how we institute things. But look in the cafeteria of where lunch is there are kids sitting at a table all by themselves, and what could we do to you know bring them in or have others recognize and sit with them in a way that doesn't call them out in a negative way? I think there are lots of creative ways. And frankly, we're working on some toolkits to put on the website that hopefully will have lots of ideas for teachers and things like that to be able to come up with things that they don't have to think of themselves, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_02:How do we define chronic loneliness as compared to average or just occasional loneliness?
SPEAKER_01:You know, and I think this is that's it's what a great question. And I think it it's also important to say that a person who's chronically lonely can be lonely in any environment. They might be sitting there at Thanksgiving coming up now, um, sitting there at a table with all their friends and family and still feel chronically lonely because they don't feel like they belong. It could be a loneliness thing, but if in fact it lasts over time, if it's a situational thing that's just, oh my gosh, I got to go to this dinner and I don't really want to be there, that's not chronic. But if one feels that over time and it doesn't go away and it's not just an environmentally driven, stress-filled moment, then it is it is chronically lonely. And the way people identify it as an example, they'll say, I don't really have a really best friend. There's nobody that really seems to care about me the way I need to feel cared for. You know, nobody really gets me. Um, and that can happen to any of us. And it may be happening to the person sitting right next to you who wears armor every day, and you would never know it.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah, the the way we appear on the outside does not always match how we feel on the inside. And that's it's an important thing for people to recognize in this very outward social world we live in, right? We see on Facebook, on Twitter, on all the social platforms, we see shiny and new, but it doesn't necessarily match what's happening internally. It does. And so it's sometimes we're we're putting on the on the pretty front because we don't know how to handle what's happening on the inside, right?
SPEAKER_01:It is about the truth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Lucy, how do you define hope?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's not for me, it's elusive to define it, but I think it is that that feeling and thought that that we carry inside that says tomorrow will be a better day. I I believe that for me, tomorrow will be a better day. And I I wanna, you know, this is interesting because I was as I was thinking about hope, Danielle, it it occurred to me hope is such a can be such a positive force in our life to keep us going. I was going to bring up grief with you as well because I think that's such an important part of this loneliness piece. But as we think about hope, it can be so positive, and yet there are times and where hope needs to be abandoned for your own sake, where you're in a relationship, as an example, that's that's very terrible for you, and you know it. I just um listened to Jen Hapmaker over the weekend, sharing North Carolina, where I am, and just finished her book Awake, you know, and where you can hope and hope and hope, and things are going to get better, and you believe tomorrow is a better day, and at some point one has to say, okay, my hope right now is not healthy in this case anymore. And I just want to make sure that that piece of the hope is also there, that we're so honest with one another, with ourselves at least, that we know where that boundary is and which is positive in our lives and which perhaps is toxic.
SPEAKER_02:It's a really important distinction, right? I mean, when you when you give that, when you illustrate that, the first thing that comes to mind personally is when I'm in recovery, um, I'm six and a half years sober. When I first, when I would initially say, okay, well, tomorrow I won't drink, right? And then I would say, well, I can have one, because I would think, I would hope that I could handle it differently this time. And what I needed to come to terms with was that I was someone who was not supposed to drink. And I kept hoping it would be different this time. And in that case, hope was not the right emotion because I was lying to myself. I was unwilling to recognize that alcohol was never going to be okay for me. It was it was my thing. Like diabetes is a thing for some people, and and epilepsy is a thing for some people, and cancer is a thing for some people, and gluten is a thing for some. And this was my thing, and it just had to be. And until I came to terms with the fact that I was never going to be the girl who could mimosa at brunch, yeah. So I had to stop hoping I was gonna sit at that table. Yeah. But I I appreciate you bringing that up because I I do think that that is a very, very important distinction. Um it's hope for me is most definitely on the fuller, richer believing side that things will change for the better. No matter how hard or how dark things are, they will shift. Uh, there was definitely a time, grief-wise, where I couldn't see it. And I had never been in that place before because I'd always been a glasses half full kind of girl. And I'd always been able to see the light, no matter how dark things felt. I'd always been able to at least see it. And there was a period of time in my life where I couldn't see it, and I wasn't sure it was there. And now at this stage in my life, I'm confident I was supposed to move through that place to recognize what hopelessness felt like and looked like in order to be able to do what I'm doing now. I don't think that I was preparing at that time that that episode of my life happened. I was preparing this podcast. And I think that I had to move through that stage in order to be equipped to have conversations with people who had also felt 125% hopeless. Yeah. So that I could see them as well as everyone else.
SPEAKER_01:So um what a beautiful way to say that. Thank you. Oh, thank you. And you know what it's you just said, is reframe hope in a way as well, right? I mean, you moved it from one can hope that a toxic thing will just get better. And we know sometimes we have we have to control that, right? We have to step out of that in order then to find the real hope that you're working for. And that's right, what you did, right? Is to say, okay, this isn't for me. I can't do that. But now that I know that, the hope is is there. I, you know, and and I can walk through that.
SPEAKER_02:But Lucy, you did the same thing, right? You're walking through Central Park, and you were thinking the path I'm on right now is not right. I'm in a place right now that doesn't feel right. It's almost as though the life you were living, as I have done before, doesn't feel recognizable. And you recognized in that calling that there was something that was asking you to not only change your path, but you were given the gift and ability to change that path for other people while you were changing yours. And that's beautiful. And to me, that's what hope is, right? Hope is not just the ability to change your own path, but to bring other people along with you while you're making such fundamental change in your own world. And that's extraordinary.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It is um it's always a journey, isn't it? You know, it is. As we do that, you know, since that time, I've had what I might call a life quake, and I'm quite sure I did not coin that term. Well, I don't know where it came from, so I can't give credit to anyone. But, you know, a number of things kind of happened at the same time, from death of a mom to, you know, um moving to my kids moving away to being diagnosed with breast cancer, all kinds of things happened simultaneously. And you realize in those moments just how important hope is to go where you are. Because it is that hope, I think, that says, yes, I can. And there is a light here. The tunnel may be a really long one looking, at least as you look down it or seem like it. Um, but that hope is what picks us up in grief. And I said I wanted to mention grief because I look at grief, and so often we know and we have rituals around the death of someone. Um, and I did listen to one of your recent podcasts. We don't have the same kind of rituals around all kinds of death, unfortunately. Um but usually we do, and we know how to support one another. There's so many other forms of grief, you know, losing a job, moving away from friends and family that you've loved forever, things that leave you hurting and empty and lonely, that we can anticipate in our friends and hold out our hand or a Call them or do whatever we need to do because we've been taught pick yourself up by the bootstraps, you can do this. You know, you can hear the language. No, do you can do this by yourself? You don't need help. You don't need a therapist. No, you don't need a flint. Um, and how do we reach out and touch them so that they know we care? I think you know, this grief stuff, it's so uncomfortable to talk about often as well for some people.
SPEAKER_02:It absolutely is. What did you find? I I'm sorry for the loss and and the life quake. It is um having so many things happen at one time. I don't know what that time frame was for you, but it's clearly happened in the in the period of time that you've been working on the project from the cost of loneliness. Um how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01:Um, every day's a journey, you know, and so I it's um one step at a time. But like you, as we talk about hope, you know, the the light seems closer some days and further some days. But I do think um that finding that support system as we talk about loneliness and not having that is critical. And you never know where that support, well, I won't say that. If you're if you're Jen Hatmaker, you built that support system all your life. If you read her book, they listen to her talk, all of her six friends there.
SPEAKER_02:Jen moves in the same circles I always have in terms of the online community. So yes, so my online community was crucial when I was going through grief.
SPEAKER_01:Of course. And hers, she has six best friends that live within two blocks of her house. They have a golf cart that they visit each other every day. And you know what? Those kinds of things, not all of us are that fortunate to have that kind of a friendset. But to build community around yourself so that if and when those times do come for any in that community, you're there to support each other. And you never know. I have just reconnected in the last three years with two friends that I had not seen in 50 years. We play competitive tennis together as children. And reconnecting has been one of the most amazing blessings for all three of us that we've probably ever had in our lives. You never know where that support, from which that support may come as an example. Being open, I think, is the key, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna ask you a question. Those two friends, have they gone through anything similar to what you're going through right now? Uh yes, they have. So I will I will say one of the things I learned in my grief. Yeah um, my I had I got a grief therapist, and she said to me, one of the things that is really challenging in grief is that your entire life breaks into three groups. People who show up for you and are there and become your core people, people who disappear entirely, and people who show up a little bit. Sometimes they say the right thing, sometimes they say the wrong thing. The challenge is that they're all being shuffled. A number of the people that you were positive were gonna be in your core, show up for you, be your people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Sometimes they end up in the disappear entirely group. And sometimes the people who are there for you are people you haven't spoken to in years. That's right. And that's what made me think of that, because I found that some of the people who have shown up and and been here for me are people I hadn't spoken to in years. And part of that piece was because some of those people were people who had had a similar experience and had the capacity to understand what grief needs to breathe. Um, and many of the people who had to disappear fell into the this is too big, this is too heavy, I I don't want it. And they had to walk away because the grief was so unknown to them and too much. Yeah. And so it's I I wondered if the two the reconnection was that you guys are in a a stage where it the beauty of life allowed you to reconnect having had similar experiences, but what a gift.
SPEAKER_01:It is a gift, and you you just said so many to me, very wise things there as we are friends for one another. And I think I I do want to cut some slack to those who aren't there because I think it is often overwhelming. They don't know how to do it, they don't want to say the wrong thing. We don't teach those skills. And for me, as I think about loneliness, and I bring it back to that, and I think about how we equip our children to deal with social connections, especially in a world where it's all about this. Yeah, yeah, man. It's all about texting, it's all about all of that. You know, how many reels can I watch a day on TikTok or whatever that may be? Are we working now to help our children build the skills they need of empathy, of caring, of listening, of connecting? I am. You know, you are yay, yay, yay, you. I work very hard at it.
SPEAKER_02:But I know a lot of parents don't.
SPEAKER_01:In our world, and I'm not even this this is not an indictment of any individual parent. Of course. It's just our world is changing. You know, at school is not the same thing. And and you know, they're they're doing it on the playground, whatever it may be, whether we're there or not.
SPEAKER_02:And I And we also have to shift some. Like we have to, we have to parent differently than we were parented, and we have to have different conversations that sometimes it doesn't occur to us. I I'll give you an example. Yeah, my there was a time when my daughter was asked to spend the night at someone's house, and she was asked via her phone, and it was mom, can I spend the night at so and so's house? Yep. And I said, No, baby, you can't because you know Cooper has a game tomorrow at such and such time. And so she went back and said no. Okay. And so I said, Sweet baby girl. And at the time she was probably 10, right? I did allow my kids to have phones early because my theory, working in the social media space, I was in the blogging space. Um my theory was I it was easier to be up in their business young and for them to understand my role up in their business than it was to try to get up in their business, giving them a phone at 14 and then try to explain to them. I told them very early, if you want things to be private, write in a journal. I will never read your journal. But your phone, anything you put on your phone, I'm here to tell you. Somebody else has access to it. If someone else can have access to it, I can have access to it. Your question is not what would Jesus do? Your question is what would my mom say if this went viral?
SPEAKER_01:So they have new business that they went.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, before your question. Now they're older now, they're 21 and 18 now, but at the time, so I realized that I had to explain to her and train her, just like our kids aren't used to answering the phone and saying, hello, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, may I please speak to? Because that's how I learned to answer the phone. So we have a generation of kids who don't know how to pick up the phone and call to make a reservation, right? So I've had to train my kids in phone etiquette.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because that was something they never automatically learned. They never called someone's house and said, hey, Mrs. So-and-so, this is Cooper or Delaney. May I please speak to, right? So I mean, I've called my kids' phones or called their friends' phones and had the friends answer the phone, yo, right? Because there's just if we don't think about it, and again, also not an indictment. It's just if it doesn't occur to you because it's not something you're watching them do. So it's only when it comes up do we actually say, Oh, I have to teach you how to do that, don't I?
SPEAKER_01:That's right. That's exactly right. And I, you know, as I again, as I think about loneliness, the best thing we can do is prevent it, isn't it? You know, absolutely teaching our young ones the skills of listening and empathy and sharing and caring and all of those things, they should come naturally. But as we socialize in our new ways, we're not necessarily focusing on the same thing. And all of us are busy, everybody's working full-time now. We have to was it the economy and everything else going on in our world? You know, so picking up on those cues, being you know, cognizant of it and intentional about it, is so important because if we give them the skills they need as children to socialize and be with one another, and this has nothing to do again with introvert, extrovert, any of that. It's how do we give others what they need in terms of listening and caring? And how do we get what we need in that same way? So, how do we build friendships, to your point, Danielle? Is right kind of the bottom line here, wherever they may be. Helping folks do that then helps prevent loneliness down the line, not totally preventing it, clearly, but it certainly helps us be aware of do I have that community? Do I have those friends that are supportive? Um, it, you know, this this loneliness connection stuff is free. We don't need a medicine for it. We don't need to worry about insurance. It's picking up the phone and calling someone we care about. It's asking them, like you did me at the beginning of this, how are you? Not just, how are you? Fine, thanks. Next. Right.
SPEAKER_02:But asking me, I legitimately care. I mean, I I want yes, I want the answer. And I think that when you said that you'll you give people grace for you know, grief being heavy. And and I, while I understand that, I have tried very hard to teach my children that in that situation it isn't about you. Um, yes, it may be hard for you, but I something stuck with me years and years and years ago. And and people who listen to the podcast will have heard me say this a handful of times. Um, in the early mom blogging days, there was a uh a mom that was a friend of ours who lost her daughter very young, and she was the same age as Delaney at the time, and our community rallied around her. And at the time, she eventually wrote about losing her young daughter. And what she had to say stuck with me at the time. And it was a time we still had answering machines, and she said, So grateful for everyone who called, so grateful for people who left messages. I didn't have the capacity to call a lot of people back. And a lot of times I didn't have the capacity to answer the phone. But what I will tell you was the loudest voice for me, the loudest noise, were all of the people who didn't call because it was too hard for them. And at that moment, I became the person who always calls. And when I call, regardless of whether or not someone answers, I will say, don't add me to your to-do list. Please just know that I'm here and I'm thinking about you and I love you and I'm sorry, whatever I feel needs to be said at the time. And because I think it's important for someone who's grieving to know they aren't alone. And as hard as it is for me, nowhere near as hard as it is for the person who's who's going through the loss. And because I've always I've I've worked very hard to do the best I can to equip my children with empathy and compassion, because I do think those are qualities that to some degree as a society we are lacking. In some in some level, we we don't have in excess. So I want my kids to to at least try. It's not always going to happen. Um, but at least try because grief is one of the loneliest experiences.
SPEAKER_01:Here's the thing. I'm gonna give folks a tool here and make it and make it easy. And I and I just really this came to my soul recently when one of my best friends died in a bicycle accident. Um, and and it's just heartbreaking right here in the same where I am. Her husband is also a dear friend of mine and has been for 50 something years. Um, and I when I went to visit with him after she died, I thought, oh gosh, what do I say? How do I do this? It's it's not comfortable. And then I realized I don't have to say a word. I just have to be there. All she wanted was for him to talk. So all I had to say, what a tool this is, I think. Show up to your point and then just say, You want to talk, how are you? Stories came out about her and him and us, and you know, wanted to tell me what happened in the accent, all the things that there was nothing uncomfortable at all about it. And healing happens when you really feel hurt. So just being there, you're helping someone else heal just by letting them talk and listening. And it takes pressure off, I think, us having to decide will I say the wrong thing, will I upset them? Yeah, will I make it worse? All the things that go through our heads as to why it's too uncomfortable. And you're right, that's about us in some in some respects. Then we own that, I guess, if that's where you are. But just sitting and listening in a quiet way is the best we can probably do for those who are lonely and grieving. Um and it it it's that part's not hard.
SPEAKER_02:Sit and thank you so much for being here with me. Where can people learn more about the Cost of Loneliness Project?
SPEAKER_01:At our website, theCostofLoneliness.com.
SPEAKER_02:Fantastic. And where can is that where people can best connect with you?
SPEAKER_01:It is indeed. There's a way right there for for people to connect with me as well. And I would love to. Thank you. Thank you for the honor of being on your podcast with you. It's been wonderful.
SPEAKER_02:It has been wonderful having you here, Lucy Rose. Thank you so, so much. And friends, thank you for joining us. I so hope we have met you exactly where you are, and that this has been a bit of light and a bit of goodness, and that you have learned something, and that there is a piece of this that you can turn around and take and share with the people you know and you love. And if you have found something good and helpful that you will take the time to review or like the podcast, and until next time, please take such good care of you. I can't wait to see you again. Thank you for being here.