Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here.

And today I want to talk all about how we can opt out of loneliness.

This is something that we don't always talk a lot about

in our community.

We often talk about relationships,

but we don't talk about the impact

of not having meaningful ones in our lives.

And so today I wanna talk about the kind of barriers that stop us from building

community. I want to talk about the historical legacy that black women also face when dealing

with the topic of loneliness. And then, of course, as always, give you some information on how to

build meaningful connection and

community in your life and end things with a healing practice.

When we talk about opting out of struggle, it's really important that we address that loneliness

is part of that struggle that we need to opt out of.

I can honestly say, I'm not a person who feels lonely in my life

often, but that was not always the case, especially growing up. I really felt alone a lot of the

times. I had great family and I did have friendships around me, but there were just moments where I felt alone.

And the data tells us that that's not an uncommon experience, particularly for black women,

that many black women have depression symptoms.

And at the root of those depression symptoms is often a feeling of lack of social

support and of basically loneliness.

There was a study that was done on black women's health and it found that when people

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