Maybe We Were Never Meant to Be Well Alone

I love being alone.

I genuinely do. I love a quiet house. A morning to myself. Working in the studio with music playing. Walking through the garden without needing to talk to anyone. I’ve always believed there is something important about being comfortable in your own company.

And I still believe that.

But lately I’ve been thinking about the other side of being well: each other.

Our brains are wired for connection. Long before wellness became something we practiced individually—with routines and rituals and all the things we do to take care of ourselves—human beings survived by belonging to one another.

We gathered. We shared food. We cared for each other’s children. We told stories. We worked beside one another. We sat together through births and deaths and celebrations and ordinary afternoons.

We needed each other.

And we still do.

There is something that happens when we are with people who make us feel safe and seen. We settle. We laugh. We exchange ideas. We tell a story and realize someone else has lived it too.

We nourish each other.

We inspire each other.

We comfort each other.

Sometimes another person reminds us of something we have forgotten about ourselves.

I think our culture has made independence such a virtue that we can forget there are things we simply cannot give ourselves. You can learn to enjoy your own company. You can create beautiful rituals. You can take care of your body, feed yourself well, go for the walk, put down the phone, tend the garden.

All of that matters.

But none of it replaces belonging.

Maybe that is why I have watched our little shop become something I never really planned for it to become.

When we opened our doors in Warrenton, I thought of the shop primarily as a physical expression of Love + Be Well—a place where you could experience what we had created online in real life.

But people came in.

And they stayed.

They talked to us. They talked to each other. They shared pieces of their lives. We began gathering in the garden. We shared food and music and conversations. And somewhere along the way I realized that what was happening between people mattered every bit as much as what was sitting on the shelves.

It has made me think differently about what it means to be well.

Skincare can nourish the skin. Food can nourish the body. Solitude can nourish the soul.

And people nourish us too.

Maybe wellness was never supposed to be entirely solitary.

Perhaps we need both.

The quiet morning alone and the long conversation across the table.

The walk by ourselves and the chair pulled into the circle.

The ability to come home to ourselves and a place where we know we belong.

I don’t want a life filled with constant activity or endless socializing. I still need plenty of quiet. Probably always will.

But I understand connection differently now.

It isn’t something extra we fit into our lives when we have time.

It is part of being human.

And perhaps part of being well is remembering that we were never meant to get everything we need from ourselves.

Come home to yourself.

And sometimes, come sit with us.

 

- Natalie