Loneliness is an epidemic: Connection is food for the soul, nourish it everyday

This article was originally published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 23, 2023 as part of Mental Health Awareness Month and is written by our Executive Director Vincent Noth .

One quarter of Americans are food insecure, 11% chronically so — a staggering statistic.

Equally staggering, new research reveals that 60% of Americans struggle with loneliness and isolation, and 36% of us chronically.

This prompted the U.S. Surgeon General,?Vivek Murthy, to declare that loneliness is now an?epidemic in America.

As director of Kinship Community Food Center (A Community of Generosity) , a Milwaukee nonprofit that uses food as an entry point to help our community thrive, I have seen the dreadful impacts of social isolation. Marginalized people often find their health and stability derailed by navigable barriers because they lack basic emotional or financial support systems.

But lack of social connection and support now threatens most Americans across all socio-economic levels, no longer just the low income or socially marginalized.

Most people see food as fuel; we know our car can’t run without it.?

What’s puzzling about social connection is how easy it is to ignore or deny our need for it. Like a car indicator light that we disregard until we find ourselves stranded on the side of the road.

Lack of social connectedness is as real as hunger, and just as devastating to our health—and not just our mental health. Studies now link loneliness to a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke, a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults, and an increased risk of premature death by more than 60%.

Kinship Food Center is known for cultivating produce grown on our urban farm with chefs that demo and serve meals from scratch. But we spend just as much time cultivating meaningful relationships within our community so that our center is abundant with social connectedness — combating poverty with belonging.

A common experience at Kinship among shoppers and volunteers alike is: “Why do I feel such warmth and connection here? This place is what my heart has been longing for and I didn’t even know it.”

We’re all looking for that place where we belong unconditionally. And this kind of belonging is impossible without authenticity and vulnerability—two super nutrients for community.

A decade in this job has taught me that those who have carried the heaviest burdens, those most familiar with their own vulnerability, those most aware of their deep need for support and connection, are sages at modeling how to nourish and feed our souls.

If we want to heal our fragmented society, a society wracked with fractured family relationships, trauma, poverty, addiction, and isolation, we must first acknowledge our own profound hunger for deeper connection.

The Surgeon General’s new report and the ongoing observance of?Mental Health Awareness Month?is a timely reminder that by getting out and sharing our time at senior centers, libraries, mentoring programs, homeless shelters and food centers, we feed our own souls while helping to heal an epidemic of loneliness.

One sure step to being received in our place of need is receiving someone else in theirs.