Freedom from Loneliness

Freedom from Loneliness PDF Author: Jennifer Page
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781478381808
Category : Interpersonal communication
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the story of one woman's quest to discover ways to find freedom from loneliness.A staggering 78% of us will suffer from feeling lonely during our lives and 11% of people often struggle with loneliness. Loneliness can have serious effects on both mental and physical health. The emphasis on online rather than face-to-face communication, changing work patterns and the increasing number of single-person households are exacerbating the problem of loneliness in today's society. Yet it's something that is seldom talked about.Fed up with the "just get out more" approach, the "you need to make new friends" approach and the "improve your social skills" approach, author Jennifer Page decided to do her own research into practical ways of making more meaningful connections in her life.Foreword by Pam Rhodes, presenter of BBC Songs of Praise.20% of the proceeds from sales of this book will be donated to the registered charity, Mary's Meals.

How to Be Alone

How to Be Alone PDF Author: Tanya Davis
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 9780062280848
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Since its debut on YouTube, Tanya Davis’s beautiful and perceptive poem "How to Be Alone," visually realized by artist and filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, has become an international sensation. In this edition of How to Be Alone, they have adapted the poem and its compelling illustrations for the page in a beautiful, meditative volume—a keepsake to treasure and to share. From a solitary walk in the woods to sitting unaccompanied on a city park bench to eating a meal and even dancing alone, How to Be Alone, reveals the possibilities and joys waiting to be discovered when we engage in activities on our own. As she soothes the disquietude that accompanies the fear of aloneness, and celebrates the power of solitude to change how we see ourselves and the world, Tanya reveals how, removed from the noise and distractions of other lives, we can find acceptance and grace within. For those who have never been by themselves or those who embrace being on their own, How to Be Alone encourages us to recognize and embrace the possibilities of being alone—and reminds us of a universe of joy, peace, and discovery waiting to unfold.

Loneliness

Loneliness PDF Author: John T Cacioppo
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393335283
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
A pioneering neuroscientist reveals the reasons for chronic loneliness--which he defines an unrecognized syndrome--and brings it out of the shadow of its cousin, depression. 12 illustrations.

The Art of Solitude

The Art of Solitude PDF Author: Stephen Batchelor
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252277
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautiful literary collage documents his multifaceted explorations. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training himself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to Batchelor’s ability to be simultaneously alone and at ease. Mixed in with his personal narrative are inspiring stories from solitude’s devoted practitioners, from the Buddha to Montaigne, from Vermeer to Agnes Martin. In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.

Created Freedom under the Sign of the Cross

Created Freedom under the Sign of the Cross PDF Author: David E. DeCosse
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666711101
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
The United States is in a crisis of freedom. Influenced by neoliberal economics, the concept of freedom has become identified with an abstract, radical individualism disdainful of responsibility to others and to the past. Signs of this crisis crop up everywhere. Some invoke freedom as justification for refusing to wear a mask in a pandemic. Others argue that freedom is an empty word if it’s celebrated apart from an honest engagement with the country’s history of racism. Created Freedom under the Sign of the Cross offers a Catholic theological response to this crisis of freedom. Catholic social ethics may be better known for its emphasis on social principles like the common good and solidarity. But developments in Catholic theologies of freedom in the last decades provide fertile ground from which to develop a bold, creative response to this American crisis of freedom. In this book, theologian David DeCosse draws on thinkers ranging from philosopher Amartya Sen to Black Catholic theologian Shawn Copeland to twentieth-century theological giant Karl Rahner in order to reimagine American freedom in light of classic Catholic emphases on embodiment, relationship, history, the good, and God. The result is a Catholic public theology that provides a redemptive path forward in an age of crisis.

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309671035
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Emergent Strategy

Emergent Strategy PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849352615
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

How to Be Alone

How to Be Alone PDF Author: Jonathan Franzen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374707642
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.

Singled Out

Singled Out PDF Author: Bella DePaulo, Ph.D.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466800526
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
People who are single are changing the face of America. Did you know that: * More than 40 percent of the nation's adults---over 87 million people---are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. * There are more households comprised of single people living alone than of married parents and their children. * Americans now spend more of their adult years single than married. Many of today's single people have engaging jobs, homes that they own, and a network of friends. This is not the 1950s---singles can have sex without marrying, and they can raise smart, successful, and happy children. It should be a great time to be single. Yet too often single people are still asked to defend their single status by an onslaught of judgmental peers and fretful relatives. Prominent people in politics, the popular press, and the intelligentsia have all taken turns peddling myths about marriage and singlehood. Marry, they promise, and you will live a long, happy, and healthy life, and you will never be lonely again. Drawing from decades of scientific research and stacks of stories from the front lines of singlehood, Bella DePaulo debunks the myths of singledom---and shows that just about everything you've heard about the benefits of getting married and the perils of staying single are grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong. Although singles are singled out for unfair treatment by the workplace, the marketplace, and the federal tax structure, they are not simply victims of this singlism. Single people really are living happily ever after. Filled with bracing bursts of truth and dazzling dashes of humor, Singled Out is a spirited and provocative read for the single, the married, and everyone in between. You will never think about singlehood or marriage the same way again. Singled Out debunks the Ten Myths of Singlehood, including: Myth #1: The Wonder of Couples: Marrieds know best. Myth #3: The Dark Aura of Singlehood: You are miserable and lonely and your life is tragic. Myth #5: Attention, Single Women: Your work won't love you back and your eggs will dry up. Also, you don't get any and you're promiscuous. Myth #6: Attention, Single Men: You are horny, slovenly, and irresponsible, and you are the scary criminals. Or you are sexy, fastidious, frivolous, and gay. Myth #7: Attention, Single Parents: Your kids are doomed. Myth #9: Poor Soul: You will grow old alone and you will die in a room by yourself where no one will find you for weeks. Myth #10: Family Values: Let's give all of the perks, benefits, gifts, and cash to couples and call it family values. "With elegant analysis, wonderfully detailed examples, and clear and witty prose, DePaulo lays out the many, often subtle denigrations and discriminations faced by single adults in the U.S. She addresses, too, the resilience of single women and men in the face of such singlism. A must-read for all single adults, their friends and families, as well as social scientists and policy advocates." ---E. Kay Trimberger, author of The New Single Woman

Loneliness as a Way of Life

Loneliness as a Way of Life PDF Author: Thomas Dumm
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067403113X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds. A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower. Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.