Key points

Loneliness isn’t about being alone. It’s about feeling unseen.

Modern life is designed for isolation.

Loneliness harms the body as much as the mind.

Belonging is the antidote.

If you’ve felt a kind of dull ache lately — not sadness exactly, but something quieter, harder to name — you’re not alone. The U.S. Surgeon General recently called loneliness a public health epidemic, comparing its impact on our health to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It’s not hyperbole. It’s data.

In one CDC survey, nearly a third of adults said they feel lonely at least once a week. Among younger adults, that number rises to almost half. Harvard researchers found that 61 percent of young people and over half of mothers with small children report “serious loneliness.”

But what most people m

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