Coming Back to Yourself · Part Four of Six · A guest series by Shannon Yerxa
For most of my life, alone meant no one wanted me around.
An empty evening meant I'd been forgotten. A quiet weekend meant I'd failed at keeping people close. I didn't know yet that alone and lonely aren't the same word.
Why Alone Used to Scare Me
Here's the thing though: I don't actually like being busy. I like doing things, but I've never wanted every hour of every day scheduled. My kids weren't enrolled in a million activities growing up. They liked being home too.
So it wasn't that I filled my life with noise to avoid the quiet. The truth is I was almost never alone in the first place. There was always someone in the next room, always something happening around me, and I didn't think much of it either way.
What actually scared me had nothing to do with busyness at all. It went back further than that, to something I'd grown up hearing without ever really questioning it: if you're relaxing, you're lazy.
But underneath even that, there was something else. It wasn't being alone that scared me. It was not being needed.
If nobody needed anything from me in that moment, then who was I? For so long, being needed was how I knew I mattered. It was proof I had a place. So a quiet evening didn't just feel empty, it felt like evidence that I didn't have a function anymore, that there was nothing left for anyone to need me for.
That's a hard thing to sit with, once you actually name it.
Nobody has to say that to you more than once for it to sit in you for decades. And even once I understood, logically, that rest isn't the same thing as laziness, it's hard to unhear something you absorbed that young. It doesn't leave just because you know better.
The First Time It Felt Different
I remember the exact evening it shifted. Nothing dramatic happened. It was just me, my boxer Roxy, and my frenchie Juni, sitting outside.
Birds. Squirrels. Wind moving through the trees. A dog barking somewhere a few yards over. The ordinary sounds of the neighbourhood, nothing more than that.
And instead of reaching for my phone or finding a task to fill the space, I just... stayed in it.
This was enough. This was peace.
No one needed me. No one was disappointed in me. It was just me, the dogs, and the evening, and for the first time in a long time, that felt like enough.
Loneliness is wanting connection and not having it. Solitude is having yourself, fully, and realizing that's not nothing.
What Solitude Actually Gave Me
Once I stopped treating alone time like a problem to solve, it started to give something back.
Space to hear my own thoughts without editing them for anyone else.
Room to notice what I actually want, instead of what keeps the peace.
The chance to rebuild a relationship with myself that I'd quietly let go of somewhere along the way.
You can't come back to yourself if you're never alone with yourself long enough to be found.
It Still Isn't Always Easy
I won't pretend solitude feels good every time. Some nights the quiet still tips into something heavier, and old habits creep back in, the urge to fill the space, to reach out, to avoid whatever's sitting underneath.
The difference now is I notice it happening. I don't need every quiet moment to turn into a project or a distraction. I let it be uncomfortable sometimes, and I let it pass.
If solitude has felt heavy for you too, you're not broken and you're not behind. You're just learning a relationship most of us were never taught how to have.
A small postscript from Andrea: Amethyst is a good companion for this chapter — a calming stone, one that settles a busy mind and makes solitude feel less like something to fill. Labradorite is worth keeping nearby too, for the nights the quiet still feels a little unfamiliar. Either one makes a quiet thing to wear while you sit with the quiet.
Not sure which stone fits the chapter you're in? The Gemstone Quiz takes about 60 seconds.
Coming Back to Yourself: the series
- This Isn't About Finding Yourself. It's About Coming Back.
- Outgrowing Yourself Without Guilt
- Friendship in Your 40s, the Real Kind
- Learning to Be Alone Without It Feeling Heavy (you're here)
- Boundaries, Confidence, and Choosing Peace (coming November 28)
- What Actually Matters Now (coming December 19)
This series is part of something we're building together — a space for women to feel safer online. If that resonates, you can learn more about Run It By a Friend First here. And if you want the why behind it — the whole honest story of the chapter that made us build it — Andrea tells it here.
