Overcoming Isolation: Strategies for Rebuilding Community

Val Walker, author of "400 Friends and No One to Call," discusses overcoming isolation and rebuilding support through compassion, curiosity, and purpose.

### Overcoming Isolation: Strategies for Rebuilding Community and Support
* 🏥 After a major surgery, Val Walker found herself stranded in a hospital, realizing she had **no one to call for help**, despite having **400 friends on social media**.
* 😔 Walker initially felt self-pity and shame, then anger towards her friends, before finally having a **breakthrough moment of compassion towards others**.
* 👴 Studies show that social isolation is an epidemic, especially affecting individuals **over 50, caregivers, and those with chronic illnesses or disabilities**.
* 👥 Walker's book, "400 Friends and No One to Call," profiles 15 individuals who successfully broke out of isolation, highlighting the importance of **compassion, curiosity, and a sense of purpose**.
* 🤝 Building a support network can take years, and Walker recommends finding a support person or group to **cheer you on** during this journey.
* 🌳 Volunteering and joining support groups are effective ways to **gradually connect with others who share your values and interests**.
* 📱 In the current COVID-19 crisis, it's important to find **creative ways to stay connected**, such as through **virtual meetups, phone calls, and letter writing**.
* 🌐 Walker's website, ValWalkerAuthor.com, provides more resources and information on her work, including her previous book, "**The Art of Comforting**."

[Music] Welcome, and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to the Beyond 50 radio program. I'm Daniel Davis. We're finding ourselves in unprecedented times as most of us navigate this thing known as the coronavirus. But certainly, long before that, we found many of us with the new technology finding ourselves more isolated than ever before. Many of us aren't reaching out to build community, having face-to-face conversations, much less building community and friendships. Asking the question, if we decide to do this and for how long, how do we actually reach out and get to the point that we can rebuild relationships and actually have community. On the program today, our guest found herself stranded after a major surgery at a hospital where no one was there to actually pick her up. He decided that when she was too embarrassed to reveal on social media how utterly isolated she was simply just by reaching out to ask anyone for help. As she recovered, she found her voice and developed a plan of action for those seeking to heal from the pain of

isolation and created a solid strategy for rebuilding support on our program today. I'd like to welcome the guest, Bo Walker. She's the author of the book 400 Friends and No One to Call. Val, thank you for being on the program today. Hello, it's good to be here. Pretty exciting times you're living in when it comes to isolation, isn't it? I think might say that is because here we've been kind of irritated with the phenomenon of people and their cell phones, you know, not really giving each other the time of day. And now it seems like everybody's wanting to do that, really that we would see more and more of it. Yeah, don't you? Yes, yes. Well, it's so amazing, you know. I would say a month or two ago, you couldn't get anybody to look up from their cell phone if you were in a grocery store. And now, you know, now that we have to be many feet apart from each other, and now that we come into grocery stores, I'm finding people are looking up and people are in this all

together we're all in this really isolating situation together, and ironically, I'm finding people reaching out more than I've seen in a long time. Now, let's go ahead and talk about how this all started for you. That was a pretty rough, you know, being in a hospital after surgery. All these friends, it seems, but nobody bothered to come and get you. And I certainly could relate to that. I remember as a child, I went in for a real simple, silly little surgery, and for whatever reason, back in the 70s, they needed to keep me in the hospital for a couple of days. But I can remember my parents made me shown up once or twice, you know, but that's still a 24-hour day had nobody coming to see you. Yes, yeah. Well, the thing that happened to me is I had carefully planned a couple of my friends to help me. I had a hysterectomy. I was in my late 50s, and I thought I had everything lined up, and I thought I had, you know, many, many friends.

I had you know, I had a master's degree. I'd been a counselor for 25 years. I thought I knew everything about how to build support, right? And lo and behold, I wake up the morning after my surgery, all tied to my IV, and I get a text message from my friend I was counting on, saying, I had a family emergency, I can't come. And it just, that was it, just that. And I could hardly wrap my mind around it. I was groggy and in a lot of pain. And, lo and behold, believe it or not, the hospital discharged me at 3:00 that afternoon. And I sat in the lobby, and I'll never forget, I just was stunned, shocked, and ashamed. Instead of feeling angry at my friend, I was incredibly embarrassed and ashamed. It was like, am I gonna have to start begging for people to help me here? And long story made short, I did try to call a lot of people. It took many, many hours, well into past midnight, and I found the daughter of a

friend of a friend to help me out, but it was so so awkward and humiliating, and I just couldn't quite recover. It just seemed for many weeks, and so I felt sort of, you know, what's wrong with me? How come I know all these people? I have 400 friends, as I say in the title of my book, but nobody I couldn't count on anybody when push came to shove. So, I went from self-pity and shame, and then to some anger at some of the friendships. I was thinking, you know, something's wrong with them, something's wrong with me, looking for fault. And my big breakthrough was when I moved to Boston about nine months later, because I realized living in little Portland, Maine, I would have to improve my life a lot with my circle of support and friends. Plus, I had lost my job in Maine. There were a lot of cutbacks, and also there had been a lot of health problems for me because I have colitis. Make a long story short, I said, okay, I've got up and moved to Boston and get a job.

and have it. You know, really do some things to change my life. And I started working in Boston with a case manager, sort of a Social Work type job. And I did not fit in that job. That first month, I felt very like I couldn't quite do the job. It wasn't good. And there was a particular co-worker who seemed to dislike me too. And I was worried I might lose my job. But here's what happened. I had a huge revelation right around the time of the Boston Marathon bombing. It was March. It was right in the middle of March 15th in 2013. I'd only been on my job one month. And I noticed that after everything had been locked down for a while, we returned to work a few days later. And the woman who seemed to dislike me so much was just stuck in her office, staring at the wall and looking really upset. And basically, I don't know what, but I just sort of felt in my heart I couldn't just leave her sitting there. She looks so upset. And I just stepped to

her door, and I reached out to her, and I checked in with her, and she just seemed really that I had asked how she was doing, and she told me that her son had been at the marathon that day and had seen his friend actually get blown up in the explosion, and that her son was traumatized, and she didn't know how to get her son to go visit his friend in the hospital so suddenly. Even though I had felt like something, you know, all that anxiety and shame, it's something about caring about her and listening to her story pulled me out of my shell, and I told her, I mentioned to her, there's nothing worse than lying in a hospital bed when nobody shows up. I didn't tell her that it happened to me, but I just said, I hope your son can go see his friend, and it just really came from my heart, and she really heard me, and she said, I am going to get him to go, even if I have to take him. Her son was about 20 years old, and then

I found out a few days later they had gone to the hospital, and her son had met with his friend. And not only just meeting up was really wonderful for them, but the friend who had been injured introduced him to many other people who had been injured too. And they all kind of bonded together and became friends. And so, it just turned out that this terrible experience that had happened to me where I had been stranded in the hospital. I was able to turn it around to helping somebody and saying, Please don't, please, please show up for your friends when they're in the hospital. And that just broke me open. I said, I've got to write a book about this. I mean, it was such a revelation to come out of my fears, my shame, and just start realizing we get support when we give support. We have to offer it. So, thank you for hearing my story. Well, no, I mean, I think it's important because I think in your story you share something that I think is more common than people think it is.

yes it's well. What I realized is a lot of people were just as isolated as I was, and that was back in 2012. What comforted me back then after my revelation, I started reading about social isolation and loneliness, and I discovered it really was an epidemic even back in 2012. And if you're over 55, over 50, AARP had these wonderful studies. They're now called the connect to effect studies. You can read about it. They started finding out these powerful isolating forces that were happening to people over 50. That one out of three Americans over age 60 lived alone, that many of us over 60 are caregiving for loved ones. That also creates great isolation. Caregivers can be very isolated. That many people also are in our age group have chronic illnesses or disabilities or issues around that that can isolate you a lot. And I also found out that a lot of us have been through a lot of losses in our life even even in our 50s or 60s and often feel isolated.

around our losses because for some reason, we feel like, you know, it's very hard to get out and make new friends and build new relationships if you've lost people in your life. So those were some of the big isolating forces, and it was actually comforting for me to see I'm not the only one. A lot of people are isolated. And finally, the friend that had no-showed on me in the hospital. I found out that her stepchildren had an addiction, an opioid addiction. And a lot of the reasons she shied away from me and it backed away from me and was in crisis in her own life was because she was isolated by the opioid addiction that was ruining her family. So I started to see a lot of us are isolated by things, and it kind of basically all the people that we try to count on might be just as isolated as you are. So I had to break out of blaming people, blaming myself, and just see the big picture. There's something really big going on here. We're isolated for so many reasons.

and we need to be compassionate and somehow reach out. Now, the other thing you brought up there too is an individual with the opiate addiction. Now, a lot of times isolation occurs and people who happen to be addicted, whether it's alcoholism, opiate addiction, any of those kind of things, and eventually for a lot of people, they tend to enjoy the isolation. But once they decide, you know, it's time to do something about those problem here, it gets a little difficult for them to reconnect with people, actually to become intimately connected, I would guess. Absolutely, the thing about isolation is it works both ways with addiction. Isolation can push you into addictive behaviors and relapses, but also isolation can be a result of having an addiction. It's both ways and all the people in your family or loved ones around you can become very isolated alongside you. So the way out of addiction or the way out of any of these isolating forces is to have somehow the courage to break out and reach out.

what is it? That's what I explored in my book. What makes us brave enough to reach out. And I was able to find 15 people to profile for my books. I wanted to look. What is it that breaks us out of our shell, our isolation, our shame, our past experiences? What breaks us out? And I realized that there are different reasons. One is our caring for others, our interest in others. You can call it the compassion route. And the other route that I found a lot of people are just plain curious. They simply get, you know, they want to break out of their isolation because they're curious. They get bored. So they use their curiosity to break out. And some people break out because they're on some kind of a mission, or they're on a healing calling to heal themselves. They're on a mission, or they have a sense of purpose to make a difference. That often breaks people out of that isolation. Now tell us how you started to write the book. You know, I'm able to reach out and actually, you know, see.

people understand how those can all work well. First of all, I started when I was going through, I might call my bitter face. After that isolating experience in the hospital and realizing I had to leave Maine and move to Boston, I went through sort of eight months where I journaled a lot. And as I went into moving to Boston and everything, I kind of chronicled what was going on with my story. It was really good to kind of chronicle my own little journey. And after that breakthrough in Boston where the co-worker and I, you know, basically, basically opened up to each other that way, it gave me the courage to reach out to some of my friends who I saw it had kind of isolated from me. So that breakthrough experience helped me start reaching out. And before I knew it, I was going to a support group also for myself because my colitis was so bad. My flare-ups I was having with my colitis was causing me a lot of pain. And it was causing me to feel more isolated because

I wasn't comfortable going out socially, and I found with the support group that I met other people who are going through the same exact thing. I was you may imagine with colitis or clones it can be socially kind of debilitating, you know, and humiliating to have that illness. So I found a kind of camaraderie going to a support group for people who I colitis, and I started making friends through that, and one thing led to another. How has it been received by people who have been trying to break the cycle of being isolated? Well, I think everybody can relate to the different people's story. I think the most important thing is that people who have been reading this have felt that they're not the only one. It helps them understand what isolation does. It kind of works two ways: they're internal reasons that were isolated in their external reasons. So if you realize inside you what are some of the things that make you isolate, you can own that but at the same time look at the forces in society and your life situations that

might be isolating you so you basically stop blaming yourself. And I found people tell me that this was kind of liberating for them to read these stories and read my story. And also read the research that I report in the book about isolation and see that, you know, it's not just about fixing yourself. It's more about understanding that there are forces in our society that do isolate us. So we can more wrap our mind around seeing that we're all in this together. And now with the coronavirus, we're really in this together because we're doing the, they call it social distancing. I think it's more physical distancing. But we can break out of the isolation of that by reaching out. There's so many good ways to reach out, you know, the old-fashioned way with phone calls and using, of course, video conferencing. I could, I've written some articles for AARP and recently about how to break out as seniors if we're feeling isolated staying at home. Now is there a website people can find out more about your work and how they can

actually help or even change the way other people are feeling. Well, certainly I do have my own website, is Val Walker author.com. And I would also say that I write for a couple of blogs. I blog for Psychology Today, and I also blog for a doctor at Mass General Hospital who started a way for patients, basically families and patients, to tell their stories about their health experiences and how they broke out of isolation around their illnesses or their health issues. It's called the Health Story Collaborative. So I'm a contributor for the Health Story Collaborative site and Psychology Today. Sounds pretty extensive. I think people ever have a lot of tools or that they could have the help them get themselves, you know, into a better, more enjoyable situation rather than just being alone. And certainly, and we're saying, you know, one of the things besides, you know, by telephone, another thing is they can also write letters. There's so many great ways. I think letter-writing is great. I'm happy to share some things that I know seniors are doing right now. I've been

very heartened to hear. For example, I was teaching at a Senior Center in the Greater Boston area here, and all my classes got canceled. I was, you know, reaching out to the director of the Senior Center. And like many senior centers all around the country, I just want to say, you know, give a shout out to these Senior Center directors who are really reaching out to seniors through phone calling, checking in. They keep their lines open for seniors to call for questions around the coronavirus or ways to stay in touch. And many of these places are actually helping seniors learn technology to increase their ability to use Skype or Zoom. You know, there are all these little tutorials being offered to seniors, especially older seniors that might be less familiar with technology. So there's this mobilization around reaching out to seniors through the senior centers. So I just wanted to give a shout out to find your local Senior Center. And also, you can volunteer there. Ways when you volunteer, you can feel less helpless. You know, when you help other people, you feel less helpless and less anxious and less.

alone. So, I highly recommend contacting your local Senior Center because they're acting as mobilizers for a lot of seniors who might be more isolated than you are. And what was your website again? It's ValWalkerOffer.com. And how can they find out what will they find there? Well, I certainly talk about the two books I wrote. I'm very happy to say I wrote a book about how to be comforting ten years ago called The Art of Comforting, published by Penguin Random House. And I do think there's some basic good stuff about how to be a comforting person when people are distressed, how to listen, how to be empathic, how to accept that person without judgment, and be present to that person. So even on the phone or if you're doing it with Skype or teleconferencing, we need comforters right now. But we can also be comforters for others who might be more lonely and isolated than you are. So my first book might be helpful with that, The Art of Comforting. And in my

current book that just came out yesterday yesterday was a release date the four hundred friends and no one to call and that's a book that's where we talk about very how to break out of isolation and how to build community and even if right now unfortunately if we can't see people in person there are many ways to stay in touch and build our sense of community by make a list of the people that really need you to reach out to them and really be proactive about calling people and checking in you might find even a long-lost cousin a long-lost high school student from way back when long-lost friends or coworkers alumni who might really welcome your call you're reaching out and I'm hearing from lots of senior though I've heard from people I haven't heard from in 20 years because this coronavirus people are really reaching out and they're finding a great deal of encouragement and it really helps with anxiety both to receive that love from people reaching out to you and to give it and to offer that support you

know it's a pretty amazing topic when you realize this is something that reaches all ages. It isn't just, you know, as you were saying, the seniors. That's usually one of the first things people think about. But, you know, it's also people who have lost jobs, people have actually decided to end marriages. I mean, I've heard a lot of stories about that where, you know, it was the spouses who had all the friendships and then once the marriage was dissolved, nobody reached out to say hi to the other one. In here, you know, this could be a marriage, it could be 15, 20, 30 years, and all of a sudden they're found with little to no friendships or anybody even reaching out. There are some really isolated groups right now. Yes, and I just really invite people, even if you feel a little shy or awkward and you're not sure what to say, it means so much to send a letter or an email or do a phone call to people that have been in your life. In fact, I really encourage people.

just to write down and think back who do I know who do I remember and think of two things. One is think of who was comforting for you back in the day where they were a comforting presence for you. And also think about the people that really needed you that you helped. And if you thought that in some way you might be helpful for somebody, go ahead and try to find try to find them. I found an old friend I hadn't talked to in 20 years who lives in Scotland. When I used a long time ago when I was in my early 20s and now I'm in my mid 60's. And it was just wonderful. I had gone through my closet and my box of all my old letters and stuff and had lost touch with this person. It was really wonderful. But couple of weeks we've reconnected and we're now skyping with each other and visiting. And it's a wonderful sense of rediscovery. So maybe in this time of coronavirus we have the time to actually

go through our old stuff and find and rediscover some people. And you never know, you might spark up a wonderful new friendship. I know one of the things too that we really didn't touch on that I think is pretty important as well is that a lot of times when you have someone who's isolating and then there's a well-meaning friend or family member that says, you know, look, you gotta break this cycle. You need to get out there, put yourself out there, so to speak. You recommend that that's probably not the best thing to do. Well, because sometimes that person's response who's been, we might call it isolating, it sounds a little judgmental, like you're doing something bad, you're withdrawing, you're not trying hard enough. What I would invite people to do because friends did that to me. Now let me explain back in 2012 around that time where I had the surgery and nobody showed up. I had lost half of my income, so my job had cut back a lot at that time, and my

car was breaking down. I couldn't afford to fix my car, and I was in survival mode, you might say. Financially, I couldn't afford to go out, and I was so caught up just trying to get by. I was caught up in my immediate needs, like on the front burner, and it seemed almost like a luxury to reach out to other people. I was dealing with too much just to get by, and I want to invite people who might be judgmental, saying, Oh, those people are isolating themselves, to try to see the big picture and look at some of those forces in that person's life that might be isolating them, let alone their internal reasons, but I mean the external reasons. There might be illness there, there might be a life situation. Understand what's happened to them, and instead of, Oh, you're isolating yourself, reach out to them and offer and say, I would really love to be your friend. You can talk to me. And whatever you decide to do to try to build your support network, build, reach out again. I'm here for you. I can.

help the chair you want on. So I just invite people to be more like a companion on that person's journey, because it takes a lot of courage to start going out again. And this was before the coronavirus, but in my book, it does take a lot of courage to try different groups and try to meet people. And one of the biggest things I recommend in my book is to find one person who can sort of be your cheering squad, your support person, so that you have a person you can practice talking to, because really isolated people get out of practice with talking, and just having somebody to talk to helps you get a little more conversational, so you're able to go meet new people. Volunteering is also a wonderful way to start meeting people and connecting with people, even if we have to do it now in different ways during the coronavirus. You know that about volunteering, because I think that's also one of those social dynamics that someone can actually in stages feel connection. You know, you don't have to go right up, for instance, and start blabbing.

or talking everybody could just quietly go in. Like, for instance, I remember a lot of years ago when I had become unemployed, and you know, obviously I'm gonna start looking for work. But other than that, I mean, who really enjoys going out and looking for a job? But I did to keep myself busy. That's exactly what I would do. I would go out. And this was, you know, during some very trying times with a bad economy. So I went to work at a local food bank. It was a neighborhood house, I believe. And you'd be astounded. See, that's the other thing I like what you said about volunteering because it also shows you a perspective you don't generally know we're seeing. In this case, I was seeing middle and upper-middle-class people coming in for emergency food boxes. And I was like, Oh, you know, you kind of think that it's one thing where people are going for emergency food boxes because they're mostly the lower-income people. But it wasn't true. And so then I began to reach out and say.

you know, so what's going on in your world. Just like you said, reach out and talk to them about what's going on with them, and it changes your perspective. You know, not to feign this arrogantly, but really, you feel like, Geez, you know, my situation isn't really all that bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're so right about volunteering. I really write a lot about, I sing the praises of volunteering, and the reason is that it gives us a nice gradual way to get to know people. You know, you can't just be looking for your long-lost friend or a new partner, but so you have months and maybe even a good year there to build a relationship of trust, and you're working together with a common cause. You're sharing your values because you've chosen something that you care about volunteer for. I just think it works wonders, honestly. I don't want to sound like it's the cure for loneliness, but man, it works a lot. So, on my top three ways for seeing us to get

connected is one through volunteering, two through maybe some kind of a support group. If you feel isolated by something like grief, or chronic illness, or having lost a loved one, there's so many really great support groups that you can connect with. And now they're connecting through, you know, Skype and phone, but you can still be connected. And so support groups can be really good for folks, including recovery, anybody who's been isolated by the same thing and finding someone who understands isolation for that, you can turn that around. What isolates you can become what actually unites you with other people. So the support group path is really good, the volunteering path is good. In my case, in my book, you see, I did both to build over six years a community of friends in Boston. See, I started from scratch, and my book chronicles how I built a support system out of good friends and good partnerships, but through volunteering and going to a support group, as I mentioned about the colitis I had. And finally, support groups through other situations people are in like a

newcomers group for people who are kind of transplanted and new in a community. There's some really nice newcomers meetups to once again we're in the corona virus quarantine period but you can still meet up with people through a lot of ways at least virtually and get connected with some of these people who would at least understand your situation. Well I have to do say this as well valid as my wife and I were out in the last week what we've been seeing is a wonderful phenomenon about connection that in our parks for instance. We live in Arizona and we're seeing more and more people in parks now yeah and it's something I haven't seen in years and I mean you know you might see the exercise or the occasional person walking their dog. What we're seeing families out with their kids done I'm like is this really all that bad actually a good thing to see this I love it. Well I've been seeing some really heartening things even here in Massachusetts all the walking paths in the woods and yeah I was kind of

barely getting out a winner now. We got a little bit of [Laughter]. Yeah, man, you can't keep these people in Massachusetts and inside right now. They want to, but they really want to get out. So yes, I so agree with you. You see people out enjoying nature. You see people reaching out to look to people that haven't been busy. You know, basically, people are not so busy so we have the time for good hearts, heart conversations. It's really wonderful to see people really talking again, yeah, and playing and just, you know, walking and smiling in each other. Now I think one last thing I'd like to touch on too as people, you know, should they decide, you know, it's time for me to get out there, just actually connect with people. I'm feeling, you know, overly lonely and isolated, but it doesn't really happen quickly either because there's a level of feeling comfortable around other people, you know, to the point of feeling confident around other people. And sometimes you might feel like throwing in the towel and we become

discouraged. How would you suggest people can work with that, you know, maybe even prevent discouragement? That is such a good question. Thank you. First of all, I warn everybody, hey, it can take years to build relationships with people, one or two, at least, to get a seriously solid relationship with a new friend or a partner. So, one of my biggest suggestions is, if you can find someone to be your support person, it may be involved a psychotherapist or a mentor, someone who's willing to be your sort of safe person that you can be vulnerable with and even practice with talking and communicating. But a lot of us feel really rusty, rusty, and we do need a person to start off with who will accept us as we are and cheer us on our journey. Now, if we're lucky enough, we know somebody by phone or we are lucky to find psychotherapists who can help be our support, it's good to have that person there so that we have a person that will cheer us on as we venture out.

know, it makes a huge difference when you try to do it all by yourself. It's much harder. See, I knew that as a rehabilitation counselor when I helped people who had brain injuries. And, you know, people who had been veterans to brain injuries or people who had PTSD or anxiety or mental health issues. As a rehabilitation counselor, I could be in the role of being that person they could they had to talk to while they were venturing out and trying out new relationships, new jobs, new classes, new things. And I find that for for those of us out there who are trying to do this again, try to find one person who can be in your court that you can share your feelings with and your fears with. And if you can't find that with one particular person, see if you can find a support group of some kind. And even, by the way, I just want to put out there the meetups that are all around the world on, you know, meetup.com. I wanted you to know that the meetup for social anxiety for

people who admit that they have social anxiety, they're just really multiplying, they're really growing. There's a huge need for people who admit that they have social anxiety, and those meetups are really increasing, and now even online through Facebook in other ways, even if it's virtual, and you talk to people on whom you can find fellow people who are just as nervous about getting out there and trying to make new friends as you are. So, find that person to be in your court, that sort of encourage you and cheer for you while you venture out. Now, lastly, I think this is pretty important for people if they come to understand this - when we were talking about volunteering, they might say, Well, what'll I volunteer for? And I can certainly say, you know, although I shared a story about volunteering in a neighborhood house, what about volunteering for a life changes situation? For instance, a bunch of years ago, that's exactly what I did as I began to volunteer in the radio media business, and the next thing you know, you're around like-minded people.

who are excited about doing maybe something that you're looking to do. And that makes it a lot easier to really connect with people because you realize you all have the same interests. Yes, you nailed it. It's about your values and your interests and what your passion might be. Or what just naturally what pulls you out of this shell out of your shell, right? I mean when you're with other people who are as impassioned as you are about something, it just naturally helps you start those conversations and get to know each other. Because you realize it's something bigger than just you. You know you care about something bigger than you together. So even with the coronavirus, I want to say they're wonderful websites like VolunteerMatch dot work. And you can call 2-1-1 or get on you know the website to one-one org. Or get on United Way. Or look at the you know vote. There's all kinds of AmeriCorps and elder corps for volunteering. And there are all kinds of

ways even with the coronavirus you can help your community right now. It might be helping to deliver things at the food pantry or dropping things off on the porches of seniors. So I would say check it out, and I have a huge piece of advice about this. Don't, don't just take any old volunteer job. Try to take a volunteer job that gives you the social opportunity to make friends. Some volunteer jobs are very isolating, like if you're just stuffing envelopes, you know, somewhere in a little backroom. But other volunteer jobs help you connect with others better. So tell the volunteer coordinator or someone who's working with you to set up your volunteer experience. Tell them how much you would like to meet certain types of people and how you're expanding your support network. By doing this, it can be, it could be a win-win. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. You know, and it's something that's definitely fulfilling and it may lead you on a different life path in such a tremendous way that she'll probably never

experience isolation again you'll be - and passionate about what yeah sometimes just that crappy job you know maybe the reason that you became isolated in the first place yeah oh yeah all right thank you so much Val for being on the program today could you give out your website again for panelists so they can find out more about your work yeah thank you so much it's Val Walker author dot-com and my book that just came out yesterday is 400 friends and no one to call it's also on audible and it's on Kindle so even in these days you can listen to it or get it on Kindle and I hope it can be a comforting guide for people who feel isolated you can walk with me and 15 other people that went through very isolating times maybe it'll help us during this time absolutely well thank you again Val for being on the program today again the book is 400 friends and no one to call but at least we called each other right that's right that's right whatever works

yeah, thank you so much. I enjoy talking to you. You bet, and take care. Okay, you too. We want to thank you, the listeners out there, for tuning in, and thank you for reaching out and connecting with us. You can also discover more by connecting with us at beyond 50 radio.com. That is the number 50. We encourage you to sign up for a weekly e-newsletter and keep up to date with what's going on and beyond fifty as well as our upcoming shows. I'm Daniel Davis. Thank you for tuning in. This is to be on fifty radio program. And remember, live your day past halfway. [Music]

400 Friends and No One to Call

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Overcoming Isolation and Building Community

Bo Walker, author of "400 Friends and No One to Call," shares her experience of isolation after surgery and the struggle to find support.

Despite having a wide social circle, she found herself alone and humiliated, leading to self-pity and anger towards her friends.

Her journey towards healing led her to Boston, where she focused on rebuilding her community and finding a job.

Overcoming Isolation and Building Connections

A life-changing revelation during the Boston Marathon bombing helped the narrator overcome their own anxiety and isolation by reaching out to a struggling coworker.

This experience inspired the narrator to recognize the epidemic of social isolation, particularly among those over 50, due to various factors such as living alone, caregiving, and coping with loss.

The narrator also gained insight into how addiction can contribute to the isolation of loved ones, leading to a shift in perspective from blame to understanding.

Breaking Out: Overcoming Isolation and Addiction

Isolation often contributes to addictive behaviors and makes it challenging to reconnect with others, but finding the courage to reach out is key to breaking the cycle.

The book explores how compassion, curiosity, and a sense of purpose can help individuals break out of isolation and addiction.

It has been well-received, offering liberation by helping readers understand the internal and external factors of isolation, and providing a sense of community in knowing that they are not alone in their struggles.

Val Walker's Impactful Work in Comforting and Community Building

Val Walker is a writer and contributor for Psychology Today and the Health Story Collaborative, focusing on helping people share their health experiences and break out of isolation.

She emphasizes the importance of reaching out to seniors and the isolated, offering comfort and support, especially during the pandemic.

Walker's books, "The Art of Comforting" and "400 Friends and No One to Call," provide guidance on how to be a comforting presence and build community, emphasizing the power of reaching out to others, especially those who are feeling lonely and isolated.

Reconnecting with Old Friends and Supporting Those in Need

Reconnecting with old friends, especially during the pandemic, can lead to wonderful rediscoveries and new friendships.

Instead of urging isolated individuals to "get out there," it's important to understand and support the external and internal factors that may be causing their isolation.

Being a supportive companion and offering to be a friend can make a significant difference in helping isolated individuals rebuild their social connections and confidence, with volunteering and finding a support person being valuable steps in this process.

The Power of Volunteering and Support Groups in Building Connections

Volunteering provides a gradual way to build trust and relationships with others, while sharing common values and a sense of purpose.

Support groups offer connection and understanding for those experiencing isolation due to various challenges, such as grief, illness, or relocation.

The combination of volunteering and joining support groups can help build a strong community of friends and partners, offering a sense of belonging and support.

The Importance of Building Supportive Relationships

Building strong relationships takes time and effort, and it's important to find a support person to cheer you on.

Whether it's a psychotherapist, mentor, or support group, having someone to share your feelings and fears with makes a huge difference.

Joining meetups or volunteer opportunities can also help you connect with like-minded people and prevent discouragement.

Making Meaningful Connections Through Volunteer Work

Volunteer work is a great way to connect with like-minded people and expand your social network.

There are various opportunities for volunteering, even during the coronavirus pandemic, such as through VolunteerMatch, 211, United Way, AmeriCorps, and elder corps.

When choosing a volunteer job, prioritize roles that provide social opportunities to make friends, rather than ones that are isolating.