Loneliness Is Really Just Missing Yourself

Renee Magritte

Today’s writing is brought to you by Many Moons 2026.
I am thrilled to share that our spiritual guide for next year, which combines Tarot archetypes, astrology, numerology, channelled messages, and more, has begun shipping!

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The channelled theme for November for Many Moons is Solitude Versus Loneliness.
You can read part of it here.

In a lot of ways, this has been a lonely year. It’s not because I’m all alone; I have an incredible partner. The Moon Studio Community is amazing, filled with brilliant, talented people—it warms my heart to gather with everyone in ways I can’t express. My dogs could never, ever make me feel lonely.

It’s because I’m not quite sure who I am anymore.
I’m not sure who I am anymore because I’m not sure what I can do.
Literally: the uncertainty around all aspects of my ability has emphasized how much trust I had put in my ability to do what I would like, to be who I would prefer, who I thought I was. Getting sick underscored how much of a privilege it is to have a regulated nervous system and a body that is healthy.

One thing that they don’t tell you about prolonged, serious chronic illness is how much it leaves you a shell of your Self. Illness sucks up so much time, energy, and hope. Time is spent trying to manage, trying to pace, trying new supplements and diets, trying new practitioners, and countless hours researching online, one of the few places folks with mysterious illnesses can find answers or guidance. (So far, my medical doctors are useless, and in fact, Kaiser, my provider, is fairly hostile towards Long Covid patients, telling me that whenever I mention Long Covid, they cannot prescribe medication or offer any further support.) For the past 3 years, I have easily spent at least 15 hours a week going to appointments, researching, and doing the activities that will “manage” the symptoms of my combined illnesses.

Here’s the thing: most of the able-bodied do not want to hear about your illness. Chronic illness makes them so uncomfortable, and most people can’t relate, or do not want to. Here’s the other thing: being ill, and everything that comes along with it, is fucking boring and exhausting. It’s boring sitting in waiting rooms for hours every week. It’s boring doing nervous system exercises every day, poring over research, being your own guinea pig year after year with no end in sight. It’s exhausting waking up, day after day, with fluctuating capacity and cognitive function, and a nervous system that goes haywire for no reason at all.

On a Reddit Long Covid thread I found, someone asked the question: “Do you feel like Long Covid changed your personality?” and the response that stopped me in my tracks was: “What personality? I don’t have a personality now.” Fellow commenters discussed how subdued they felt, how muted, how unlike themselves they were now. How challenging it was to access humor, joy, and aspects of their personality from before times. On another thread, a wife desperately asks for answers from LC survivors after her ill husband committed suicide. He wasn’t like this before Covid, she explained, and a chorus of commenting people respond, sharing the changes in their brains, their personalities, the loss of the will to live.

No one is talking about how one of the (many) reasons we lack empathy, is because Covid has changed the brains and nervous systems of millions of people.

Maybe if we did collectively talk about it, if we were allowed to grieve, let alone address the elephant in the global room, things could change.

No one talks about how illness rips away your connection to spirit and spirituality. My belief and connection have been tested like never before. Ironically, it has been my belief, my faith, my inner spark, my unshakeable will to live that has allowed me to move forward, one step after another, over and over, until my life now resembles something more “normal.” I do believe that any progress I made was through intuition, prayer, and a strong will. I do believe that the more I can make meaning through alchemy, action, and transformation, the more I will feel like myself again.

Part of feeling far away from myself is the truth that I don’t like the person I became while being attacked by a ruthless illness for years. I thought I’d be courageous, graceful, endlessly faithful.

Instead, trapped in dysautonomia and brain damage, toggling between collapse/freeze/overwhelm and deep grief/sorrow, I became someone I didn’t recognize. I’m ashamed of the lack of grace and acceptance I gave myself, especially now that so many studies are coming out about just how terrible this virus is. I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t implement my own teachings and wisdom more effectively, but am grateful that I’ve recovered enough now to begin to apply them.

I have shame about how isolated Long Covid made me. I thought I’d have a circle of people around me, bringing meals, offering to help, offering their care and time. Instead, when I asked multiple friends for support, and to address my needs more, they left. Family members brought Covid over on the plane with them, after I told them how cautious I was being after Long Covid made me so ill and cost me so much. If I hadn’t made them take tests, I would have been reinfected by them multiple times.

Some of the closest relationships I thought I had been building for years—poof!—disappeared when I changed, when I was in the throes of overwhelm, confusion, and suffering, and shared that suffering with them vulnerably. When I allowed myself to cry and show my fear in front of others, it was too much. To have cared so deeply for folks and to believe that care would be reciprocated, and then realize it would not withstand a long, dark night of the soul, a body who needed more, a person asking for more, has been one of the harder pills to swallow. (And I’ve swallowed a LOT of pills in the last few years!)¹

I also understand. Leaving is a boundary, too. My behavior might not have been appropriate; asking anyone for anything more, in these times where everyone is dealing with so much, might have been a mistake on my end. I made a lot of presumptions about friendships and relationships, and I’m grateful to have learned what was real and what was not.

When people say that the veils are thin, that is what they also mean—we are seeing who has capacity and who doesn’t. All the nervous system education I had to learn has given me immense compassion for others who do not have the capacity. It isn’t personal; they simply do not have the capacity. And now is a time for capacity building, for grace, and more compassion.

I have become more compassionate, more patient.

Getting to know yourself again is a process. I’ll use all the tools I have. I’ll Moon Map and use Many Moons and energy work and creativity and nervous system rewiring and I’ll enjoy the process. I’ll let myself be inspired and delighted as I become healthier in all ways.

The rebuild begins with heaps of forgiveness. As a child of someone who always made everything my fault, the hardest person to forgive has always been myself. But this is the time and that is the task.

One of my favorite traditional definitions of forgiveness is to no longer want revenge, or be resentful. This starts with our relationship with ourselves.

You forgive yourself not through rumination, but through taking different actions.
You forgive yourself through not putting yourself through the same punishments, over and over, but through allowing the gratitude and grace that is still left to flow through and pave a new path forward.

One way to deal with grief is to write down everything you appreciate and everything you regret. Those become your lights in the dark.

In a Tarot reading I gave earlier today, Spirit came through strong.
Spirit told my client, someone also dealing with very real, great amounts of suffering and health issues, someone who is still trying hard, but also rebuilding:

This isn’t work.
It’s your life.

A-fucking-women.
A-fucking-them.
A-fucking-men.

To life. Here’s to the honor of getting to know yourself again through conscious creation. To forgiveness and trust. If you’re feeling lonely, it’s understandable, and I’m so sorry. But if it is because you’ve been away from yourself for too long, it’s time to reconnect.

How to Get To Know Yourself Again
(An incomplete list)

Write an Alive List.
What makes you feel alive, come alive, is what to do and what to come back to. What do you love? Do that, more and more. Over and over.

Accept and love what is.
Even the hard parts. Especially the hard parts.
Acceptance is also: Stop wishing you were someone else. Stop wishing you were someone else. It’s all an egoic distraction. Focus on what is, and what you can work with. Start where you are. Love everyone who is here: there are a LOT of people! Love everything that is, and have gratitude for everything you have: there is a LOT!

Acknowledge how far you’ve come. Remember you get to write your own story, not anyone else. You aren’t your worst days, and you aren’t your best days. You become who you want to be by consistent practice. You create your own story through actions.

Self-trust and confidence are built with actions, over time.
Self-esteem is built through esteemable acts. It is who you are and what you do when no one is watching. It’s you, fighting for your literal life, over and over, even though no one notices. The Universe does, though. Your guides do, too. Your inner child and your future self notice too. That’s more than enough.

Have a positive and abundant mindset.
Focus on your strengths, on possibilities based on your interests, values, and gifts. Having a positive and abundant mindset isn’t about bypassing the suck. It’s understanding the suck will be there, in varying degrees, and you can always choose how you’d like to respond to it. It’s recognizing that sometimes, the most appropriate responses are rage, grief, outrage, and disappointment. Learning how to process those emotions effectively is part of a spiritual practice.

Make the time you have with yourself be quality.
Stop saving the best parts of yourself for others, and give it to yourself. Delight yourself. Inspire yourself. Make yourself laugh. Impress yourself. Every day. Have a good time, whether you are alone or with others.

On that note…

See solitude for the gift it is.
Time is a luxury. Alone time is a gift. Solitude is meant to restore your relationship with yourself and with life. Use it wisely. Use it to connect to yourself, and love yourself again.

Connect to spirit and make magic just for you.
No outcome, just experience. No asks, just being with.
Let the experience be enough. As your depth of receiving and belief grows, so does your magic.

Just start creating.
Don’t think, just make. Every day. Let it out. Listen to it. Flow with it. Have fun!

Take risks and try.
Release expectations, let go of ideas around failure and success.
Success is trying. Success is perspective. Success is integration. Success is alchemy.

Expand consciously, consciously expand.
Let yourself try something new.

Let yourself be someone new.

1. I want to be clear, because my partner is always like: You have friends! You have more friends than me! I do have friends! There are many, many MANY incredible people in my life and I love them! If you’re reading this and you are one, I LOVE YOU! I am specifically talking about a small group of people I had considered my very closest friends and family members, who I had assumed would show up for me in my darkest/sickest hours, and did not.