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Practicing Solitude and Living as a Hermit -What is the Difference?
This past week, holed up in my room and recovering from cancer surgery, I have been pondering the concept of solitude….
In past years, I have vastly neglected my need for solitude. It has only been a few years since I was living a completely different life, caring for my mother who had Alzheimer’s, my husband who was emotionally unavailable, and working almost full-time as a preschool teacher in a classroom with 20 students and three co -teachers.
Since that time, I have graduated from a Masters in Divinity program, and gotten ordained in the American Baptist churches. I have also begun working full-time as a minister. Shortly after all of that happened, I experienced a pandemic, a move and a crisis in my marriage, (all of which were uncomfortably wrapped up in one another).
I now live alone, as a single woman, in my own room, but in a community house with six housemates. My mom died in 2016, so I have not been a caregiver for an elderly person in seven years. I have not worked in a classroom of 20 students since 2018. Life looks very different than it did just a few years ago. In my previous life, I was almost…
