Chapter 30 - Nobody sees me - the loneliness no one admits to

Nobody sees me - the loneliness no one admits to

You can have a full life… and still feel completely alone.

In this deeply honest episode of Burn It Down and Begin Again, Erica pulls back the layers on one of the most misunderstood human experiences: loneliness. Not just the obvious kind—but the quiet, hidden loneliness that shows up in full houses, long marriages, busy lives, and even success.

Because loneliness doesn’t always look like isolation.
 Sometimes it looks like being surrounded by people… and still feeling unseen.

Through real stories, raw reflection, and moments pulled straight from everyday life , Erica explores:

•  The loneliness of success and outgrowing your circle 
•  The quiet ache of evolving while others stay the same 
•  The emotional distance that can exist inside relationships 
•  The unexpected loneliness that comes with aging and changing family dynamics 
•  Why social media connection is not the same as real connection 

But this episode doesn’t stop at awareness.

Erica shares practical, real-world ways to break out of loneliness—from rebuilding old relationships to creating new ones, stepping outside your comfort zone, and learning how to be the one who reaches first.

This is a conversation about courage.
 About being seen.
 About choosing connection—even when it feels uncomfortable.

If you’ve been feeling disconnected, unseen, or like no one truly understands you… this episode will remind you of one thing:

You are not the only one feeling this way.
 And you don’t have to stay there.

This episode is part of the Chickology podcast collective—Real Women. Real Stories. Real Transformation.

🌸 About Chickology™
Chickology™ is more than a podcast brand — it’s a collective of strong, real women telling real stories. Together, we’re reclaiming our narratives, breaking cycles, and lifting one another up through truth, laughter, and raw conversations. Every show under the Chickology™ umbrella is created by women, for women, with love.

✨ Join the Movement
We’re always looking for bold voices and powerful stories. If you’re a woman ready to share your truth or host your own podcast with us, reach out! One honest truth at a time, we’re helping one isolated woman at a time feel less alone.

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💫 Because when women rise together, we change the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You have 847 followers. Your phone buzzes constantly. You've got people all around you. Maybe a partner, maybe a family, maybe a social calendar. And yet at 2 a.m. you're lying there feeling like nobody actually gets you. Nobody actually sees you. You're completely, utterly alone in a room full of people. Or maybe you're at the top, you've worked hard, you've built something, and somehow the higher you climb, the more isolated you become because nobody around you understands the weight that you're carrying. Or maybe you're in middle age, watching your friend circle quietly shrink and wondering how that ever happened. You might be aging and the world just keeps moving, and somehow you got left behind in it. Loneliness doesn't always look the way we think it looks. It's not always that person sitting alone in a dark room. Sometimes it's the most connected person in a room who's dying inside. Today we're pulling back every layer of it, and more importantly, we're talking about what you can actually do about it. Stay with me. This one matters. Welcome to Burn It Down and Begin Again, because sometimes the only way out is through the fire. I'm Erica, and this is my story told one chapter at a time. Not to relive the pain, but to reclaim the power that was buried beneath it. I share it boldly because I know I'm not the only one. Too many of us carry stories like mine of trauma, silence, survival, and shame alone. But healing isn't just about surviving what hurt us. It's about becoming the people we were meant to be, how we can transform pain into purpose and rebuild a life on our own terms to show what is possible when we rise to the strongest version of ourselves. If you hear yourself in my words, know this. You're not crazy, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone. This podcast is part of Czechology. Real women, real stories, and real transformation. We're here to break cycles, rise higher, and create lives that radiate power, purpose, and passion. So if you walk through hell and you're ready to grow, evolve, and rebuild, then stay with me. There's hope here, there's healing here, and there's an army of us rising with you. Now, let's begin. Hi everyone, welcome to Burn It Down and Begin Again. This is Erica, and I am so glad you're here. Seriously, you guys, whether you've been listening to this since day one or you just found this podcast today, thank you. This community just keeps growing, and I do not take that lightly. Every single one of you who tunes in, who shares an episode, sends me a message, it genuinely means a lot to me. Real quick before we dive in, if you are not already following me on social media, go do that right now. You can find me on Instagram under Burn It Down and Begin Again. Also, my personal public platform, Erica Gill, that's E-R-I-C-A-G-I-L 3404, that's Instagram. And I'm also on TikTok under Burn It Down and Begin Again and Facebook. So I post on all the platforms. Uh wherever you hang out, come and find me, like, follow, subscribe. And if this podcast has meant something to you, it would mean a lot to me if you go and just give me a like, give me a star rating, and maybe leave a comment. It really, really helps push this podcast uh into an algorithm where more people can reach it. And I think this uh podcast is something that, I mean, based on the comments I'm getting, it's helping a lot of people. So let's get it out there to more people who might feel like they're kind of alone in the world and this is a voice for them to feel a part of something. So that's it. Let's get into it. So today, guys, we are gonna be talking about loneliness. And before you think, oh, this is a depressing topic, stay with me because this conversation is gonna hit differently than you'd expect. We are gonna talk about the different ways of being lonely in the obvious sense, but we're gonna get into the layers of it. You know, the loneliness that you feel even when your life looks full, uh, comes with getting older, success, not being understood. And we're gonna talk about what you can actually do about it because I don't like leaving people hanging with problems and no direction forward. So we're gonna talk about that today. But first, as always, I get into the challenge of the week and I'm gonna give you mine. Uh, this is something that I've been dealing with a lot, which is getting stuff done that I don't want to do. And I know it sounds almost too basic, but it is something that I think most of us deal with. I mean, every day people are, you know, talking to me at work, like, oh man, I know I need to get this done, but I'm not getting it done. I've definitely been there. So we've talked about it. I'm super busy, I've got my days off, and that, you know, I have limited time. So I have to put in my rest and my recovery and then all the stuff that I have to get done, you know, house projects, you know, taking the dog to the vet, going to the doctor, all that good stuff. And it's not that I don't have the time, but or the energy because I, or or even the mental willingness. It's just sometimes I just procrastinate, right? So taxes, guys, that was for me. I've known, of course, that I had to get my taxes done and I just kept procrastinating. For weeks and weeks and weeks, I just had it sitting there and it was like eating at me. And I would think about it, but then I wouldn't do it, right? So, of course, last minute I go to get it done, and I couldn't believe how easy it was. It took me like 15 minutes because I already had all the documents to just like PDF them, upload them, and get them to my tax person. And I was wondering after, you know, all of the mental torture, why did I make that so hard in my head? And I think that's something that we all need to pay attention to because it's that thing that's sitting in your head undone. It takes up so much mental energy than actually doing it. And I know this, but sometimes I do it anyway, right? The cost of avoidance is way more than the task. So, my challenge to for myself and for you this week is just to pick one thing that's been sitting there nagging at you and go try and tackle it. Just do it, start it. Even if you don't finish it, get the ball rolling. And I promise you it's not going to be as bad as you thought it was gonna be. And when it's done, you're gonna be having the same conversation with yourself that I had, which is why didn't I do that sooner? Okay, so let's talk about loneliness today's topic. As you know, I work in a very high-volume retail environment and I talk to people all day long, back to back. And you would think that in that kind of a setting, the conversations would be pretty surface level, like transactional, right? In and out, but that is not what happens to me, not even close. I don't know if it's my energy or something written on my forehead, but people open up to me all the time. They sit down across from me and they often just unload, sometimes even cry, whatever is going on in their lives. And I can almost guarantee, like I said, once a week that somebody's gonna end up crying. And right there, you know, in my store. And, you know, it's one of those moments where you reach across and you, you know, at least I do, I put my hand on their hand and I give them a squeeze. You know, I think they just need somebody to listen. And that's what prompted me to do this episode today because I hear over and over again, you know, people are lonely. People feel isolated, estranged from their kids, disconnected from their friends, you know, going home to an empty house or to a full house, and still it feels even emptier. You're alone in an empty house. I think that makes it worse. My ex-husband and I was thinking about him, he's been struggling with feeling that way. So he had our youngest son living with him, and my youngest son just got into his own house, and so he's got an empty house, and he's been kind of dealing with that empty nest syndrome. And I haven't had to deal with that yet because I've got kids in my house, but I get it, you know, I really do. And it's something real. He keeps himself super busy, he's good at that, but he doesn't have anybody in his life right now. So he just like plugs away, and I think that's kind of a coping mechanism for him. He actually does just he creates stuff to do. So he doesn't have to sit alone and think about that and have those feelings creep up. When our mind is not busy, of course, that's what happens. And I get that. You know, it I think loneliness is really misunderstood. And I think one of the most painful kinds of loneliness is when your life looks fine from the outside. You have people around you, you have a family, maybe a partner, friends, and yet there's this deep hollow feeling inside that you can't shake. So when I was going through my depression and my addiction, I really felt this intensely and myself isolated, you know. I knew that I had people who loved me. My kids were there, I had friends that would have shown up for me if I had asked, but I just couldn't reach out. I just sat there in a stupor. I could not let people in. And I had built this wall, partly, I think, out of shame, partly out of feeling like nobody really understands, and I didn't want to be a burden, right? I didn't want to be a burden to people. I think we do that all the time. So instead of reaching out, I went deeper into myself. And oftentimes that ended up with the drinking because I wanted to shut those voices up inside of my head. That kind of self-imposed isolation, it did make everything worse. Looking back, I understand now why I did it, but it was still one of the most poignant, difficult times in my life. When you are going through something that feels shameful or out of control, the last thing you want is to be seen. You don't want people to watch you struggle, so you pull away. You know, you say that you're fine, you stay busy, or you go completely quiet. But either way, you're doing it alone. And that's the trap, right? Because the loneliness feeds the isolation. And the more alone you are, the more alone you feel. And it starts to feel like a truth about you rather than just a circumstance that you're in. So if you are in that place right now, I want you to hear me. You are not uniquely broken. You are not the only one. And that shame that you're carrying, whatever it is, it does not have to be carried alone. The only way, guys, that you're ever going to change anything is to step outside of that comfort zone. So reach out. Uh, here's another one that doesn't get talked about enough, which is the loneliness that often comes with success or leadership or just evolving as a person in a way that your current circle hasn't evolved with you. You know, maybe you've worked really hard and you've built something, you know, real, you've grown, you've changed, and you look around at the people that you've known since high school that you've known forever, you know, or in your early 20s and you love them and you genuinely love them, but you realize you can't talk to them about what you're actually dealing with or even about what's on your mind or the things that you think because they're just in a completely different place and they don't relate. The conversations stay really surface. And that is a, you know, part of what makes us feel lonely, right? When nobody gets us in our social circle. Nobody's asking you about the hard stuff because they don't even know what the hard stuff looks like from the angle that you're standing in. And you can't explain it without sounding like you're bragging or complaining. So you just keep it to yourself. And slowly you start to feel like nobody actually knows you anymore. And that is real loneliness. It feels really lonely. And it's the kind of lonely that really is hard because from the outside everyone thinks you're doing great, but then inside you're feeling like you're isolated and alone. There's, I see this all the time too. There's the loneliness of getting older and realizing that your relationship with your kids isn't what you thought it would be. You know, maybe they've moved away, maybe they're out of state, or they've, you know, got their own family and they're just too busy to include you. And you find yourself in this house that used to be full of noise and now it's just quiet. Or maybe they're not that far away geographically, but they're busy, they have their own lives, and that even feels worse sometimes because the calls get shorter, the visits are less frequent, and you start to feel like, God, I spent all those years raising them, and now I'm left with a handful of nothing. Like the family you built, the thing that you poured everything into. I know I did. My heart and my soul has moved on without you. And you wouldn't want to say that out loud, of course, because you don't want to make them feel guilty. So you smile and you say everything's fine, but inside you're really hurting. And I do hear this one constantly. And so I want to say to every parent who feels that way, that feeling is valid. It doesn't mean you failed or that your kids don't love you. It just means that nobody told you that this part was coming, right? And it's harder than anybody prepares you for. My kids surround me. I have two that live with me and one that lives just down the street, and the other is 10 minutes away. And literally, I talk to them, text message them, we have communication. But even the one that lives two doors down, I might see her physically two times a week. No, they're busy and I get that. I'm busy too, but I have to intentionally create family get together so that we can all be on the same page. I know my kids love me and they know that I know that I am loved, but they just don't always have time in their lives to hang out. And I value it so much when they do, but I'm not counting on them to do it because they are busy doing the things that they want to do in their lives. So if I want to spend time with my kids, it's up to me to make that effort and create something that we can do together. Uh, and not everybody's available all the time, but I do my very best. Some people are genuinely estranged though from their kids, and that is a really hard one. Their kids just don't seem to want much to do with them anymore, and that is sad. But in life, as they say, you have to get busy living or get busy dying. And the truth is we can't go through our lives waiting for our kids to show up if they're just unable or unwilling. We have to find other avenues to create new situations and relationships. Let's talk about the loneliness of being sick. Okay, this is this is a real one of dealing with something in your body or your mind that's life altering. Maybe you have constant pain, or maybe you, you know, are suffering from something like MS or you know, something debilitating. And you realize that the people around you cannot fully be there with you. You know, they try, they mean well, but they don't get it. There is a specific kind of alone that comes from carrying a diagnosis or chronic pain or a condition that changes everything about how you move through the world, how you look and see things around you, right? And everybody else just keeps going like it's normal. They do not feel what you feel when you wake up in the morning and they don't carry what you carry. And sometimes the well-meaning comments just to stay positive, have you tried this? That you look fine, it can make you feel even more invisible than the silence would. That is a deep kind of loneliness, and that deserves to be named, right? Let's talk about loneliness inside of a relationship. Whew, I know a lot of people that feel that way, and I certainly did in mine. You know, uh, from the outside, for many years I had a marriage that looked like it was thriving or doing well, but we just did not. I mean, we we were good at running the business of life together. We had a very similar work ethic, but we did not connect or have a deep relationship. And I was so lonely inside my marriage, and I just kind of ignored it, right? I pretended that it wasn't there. I just kind of kept myself busy. And slowly everything just began to unravel until it was there was nothing left. And so I understand this part fully. This one catches a lot of people off guard because, you know, they're not alone technically. They have a partner, but you know, maybe you share a bed or a home, a life, whatever that you've built together for years. But somewhere along the way, you outgrew each other or just stopped seeing each other as you truly are. You woke up one day and you realized you've been having the same surface conversation in a loop for years and there's no real depth anymore. You just don't know your partner. You feel unseen and unknown. And the worst part is you can't really even talk about it because how do you explain that to someone that you're lonely while you're standing right next to them? That kind of loneliness of being in a relationship that no longer feeds your soul is one of the quietest, most suffocating kinds of loneliness there is. And I do know a lot of people currently in that situation. Uh, here's one that I think that is massively underestimated in our culture right now, which is digital loneliness. So, in most ways, you know, we really are more connected than in any other generation in human history. You can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime. You have a thousand followers on your page, you get likes on everything. And yet, study after study is showing that people, especially younger people, are lonelier than ever. Because what we're actually not craving is content or a notification, it is presence. We are missing that human connection. Sitting across from someone, I contact, that's why I think I get so much of that kind of interaction in my work, right? Because they're sitting across from me, they're paused, and here, they're across from a real person, and somehow they just start unloading and they'll often say, I don't know why I told you all that. Well, I do, yeah. We miss real laughter, a real conversation that goes somewhere you didn't expect. And social media, for all the good it can do, is a really poor substitute for that. We are feeding ourselves digital junk food and wondering why we still felt empty. And I love social media, don't get me wrong, but it is a trap. Okay. So what we can actually do, I want to talk about those things right now because we've talked about different kinds of loneliness and there's a lot of different ones. But what can we do about it? So the first thing I want to say is that connection requires initiative, right? It doesn't just show up. And the older we get, the more intentional we have to be about it because life isn't throwing us into the proximity usually of people the way that it did when we were young and we were socializing. You have to decide to pursue it. And yes, that can feel really uncomfortable. It can feel vulnerable. But I want to use the example of my best friend who is considerably younger than me. Uh, we are just soul sisters, but she is the best example I know of what it actually looks like in practice. So when she became a mom a few years back, she found herself in a season where her existing friend group just did not relate to what she was going through, right? She didn't have mom friends. She didn't have people in her life who were in the same trenches of that new motherhood place. So instead of just accepting that loneliness and waiting for something to change, she did something that most people would never do. She went on Facebook mom groups and she didn't just scroll. She reached out, she initiated conversations, and then she found women that, you know, she thought, hey, we might click and invited him to a play date. And then she would have parties at her house where she would invite this group of women with their kids to have play dates all together. Guess what? That is a friend circle now. She has a legitimate friend circle of people that have stayed in her life and show up for her all the time, and that she has a real, real relationship with. So this incredible tight group of mom friends, women who talk every day, you know, who go to each other's events and have each other's backs. And my friend built that on purpose out of nothing but initiative and a willingness to be a little uncomfortable. Most of us are not going to have the courage to do that. That story, it really stays with me because it's set it's such a pure example of what is possible when you decide that you're willing and you're not going to stay lonely and you're going to do something about it. And that's life, right? Uh so let's talk about other real ways to start creating connection. You've got to reach back. Think about somebody who you've drifted from, a friend maybe that you used to be close to, somebody who really mattered to you and life just got in the way, and now you guys just barely talk anymore. So send the text. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Hey, I was thinking about you. You would be amazed at how many people are on the other side of that message just waiting for somebody to go first, feeling the same way that you are. Second, find your people through something shared. Man, it might be a class or a gym or a group, a cause, community church, whatever you're into. Community forms naturally around shared experience. You already have that common ground, so let that be the on-ramp. Third, this one that is specifically for parents who are feeling the distance from their kids. I know that feels scary. I know that you don't want to guilt them or pressure them, but there is a version of this conversation that is honest without being heavy. Something like, hey, I really miss you. Could we get together for dinner this week? Could we, you know, get together for coffee? Just a way to connect more. Most kids, when they hear that from a parent in a gentle and you know, direct way without making them feel guilty, they want to respond to that. They're just as busy and they assume you're fine because you haven't said otherwise. So say otherwise. Fourth, put down the phone and show up somewhere in person. I know that sounds simple, but it's actually really radical right now in this world of online groups. Go physically join something. Go on Meetup. I mean, my God, you guys meet up. They've got hiking groups, cooking groups. There's so many different groups, and people are actively joining them. You got to take that initiative. If you're a churchgoer, join a small group. Gosh, if you like to knit, join a knitting community. Go somewhere regularly enough that people start to recognize you and you know, want to talk to you. Presence creates connection. You cannot build real relationships entirely through screen. You just can't. And fifth, be willing to go first, guys. You've got to have be brave always. In any situation, whether it's the first text or the first invitation, first honest conversation about how you're feeling. Most people are waiting for somebody else to make the move because they're scared too. Be the brave one, be the one who doesn't wait. So here's what I want to leave you with: loneliness, guys, it is not a character flaw. It is not a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with you or that you're unlovable or that you missed your window. It's just one of the most universal human experiences that exists. And it's also really not talked about very much because admitting you feel lonely feels vulnerable in a way that our culture doesn't always make room for. I've shared with you my kids, two of them live with me, and then the other one's down the street, the other one's 10 minutes away. But I have found times where for no particular reason I'm feeling nostalgic and a little lonely for the life that they had growing up when we were always together. And I look back and I think, gosh, did I really make the most of that? You know, you kind of start to go down that road in your mind and that nostalgia of that together time. I feel that very profoundly. My kids, like I said, they're very active and present in my life, but I even feel that way sometimes when it comes to my kids, that pang of nostalgia and that missing of the past, right? So, that what do I do to fix that? I do my very best to ask my kids, hey, do you have time to come and have lunch with me? Can I make you something to eat? Um, and and sometimes they have time and sometimes they don't, but I do. Make that effort. We all crave connection. We all want to be understood and we all want to be needed. This is universal. I've said it many times, but sometimes when you're feeling that way, the best thing you can do is get out of your head and do something for others to make them feel good, right? I firmly believe this: that when we can get out of our own loneliness or own heads, go do something for somebody else. You know, make something for the coworkers at work, something yummy to eat. If you know somebody's struggling, do something nice for them. Reach out. Even if your kids don't respond or, you know, don't have the time, make an effort to repeatedly get out and reach out to them. So I can use this as an example. Okay. I did not have the greatest relationship with my sister for a very long time. And it was my fault. She lives on the East Coast. That's not my fault, but it is harder to get together. But I know some people that talk to their sisters like every day or a couple times a week, but I damaged that relationship when I was suffering with my alcoholism. I think it was really hard for her to understand how I could go down that addictive path after we watched our father self-destruct with that. And it violated trust. And out of safety, she pulled back, you know, and really hermited. She didn't want anything to do with me for a long time. So when my life started to change, I made a repeated effort to, you know, call, to reach out, to go out to visit her, to make sure she could get to know me. And for a long time, she was cool. She didn't really respond. She would take the phone calls, she would chat, but there was no real reciprocity. And I can honestly say now that, you know, we don't have a perfect relationship, but it is being rebuilt. And I think that had I not done that, well, I know for a fact, I would have gone the rest of my life without having a relationship with my sister. I just needed to show her that, hey, I want to show up, I want to be there, I'm gonna make the effort. And people respond to that. Don't forget that people respond to if you are making the effort. This goes for relationships that you've damaged. A lot of them can be repaired if you make the effort. And that doesn't mean making the effort and if they rebuff you or you don't get the response you want, you go hermit again. No, you've got to be fucking brave and show up and keep making that effort. Staying silent about it does not make loneliness go away, you guys. It just makes it louder inside. So you got to name it. And I'm always saying this: name it. You got to feel it first to yourself and then maybe to somebody that you trust or that person you're feeling lonely for. And then start taking one small step towards something different. It does not have to be a perfect plan or a complete overhaul. It just has to be a step. One text, one yes to an invitation that you normally decline. I'm really good at that too. I get invited, I'm like, no, I just want a hermit, I want to be home. But every single single time that I say this, I genuinely feel grateful for the times that I have not wanted to go out socially, but I'm like, I really should go. And then when I go, I'm like, my God, I'm I'm so glad that I did because you know I had a great time and I reinforced and strengthened my relationship with the people that invited me. So just start with one honest conversation with yourself. That is where it starts. Where do you feel lonely and what can you do about it? How could you fix a particular connection? Or what might you do to be in a situation where you can make new friends? Connection is out there. Real messy human connection. You just have to be willing to reach for it. So that is a wrap for today. I love you guys genuinely. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time. Thank you for being here and holding this part of my story with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you're walking through your own fire right now, know this. You are not too broken, you are not too late, and you are never ever alone. This is Burn It Down and Begin Again. I'm Erica, and I'll see you in the next chapter.