Growing Older, Growing Wilder: A Reflection on Loneliness and the Longing for Connection

There’s a quiet kind of loneliness that can settle in as we grow older—a whisper more than a roar. At the end of a long day when the phone doesn’t ring.

Living here on this beautiful sanctuary in the mountains, surrounded by medicinal plants and wild creatures, I am held by the land—but not always by people. And while there is deep magic in solitude, there are days when it feels like I’m dissolving into the mist. No witness. No hand to hold. No one to say, “I see you. I still see you.”

Getting older is not what I thought it would be. I did not think I would remain single.  I did not think I would disappear from MoonMaid. I thought it would be a shedding. A refinement. A becoming.  It seemed instead I disappeared made more difficult when the world, at times,  doesn’t seem to value the slow wisdom of a woman turning 70.

Where once there was a flurry of movement—nieces, nephews, business, caretaking—now there is an emptiness.  A vacant space where everything rises: memories, grief, yearning, and the ache for companionship.

I write this for the women out there—maybe you’re in your 60s, 70s, 80s—who are feeling invisible. I see you. You are still needed. Still luminous. Still capable of astonishing joy and unexpected love.  If only we can remember this.

I also write this as a reminder to myself: that I can reach out. That it’s not too late to change. That it’s okay to want more community, more laughter, more touch. We were not made to do this alone.

So if you are lonely, aging, and wondering if your best years are behind you—pause. Listen. What is your heart whispering? Who might you call? Where might you go? What might you create, even now?

Let us not fade. Let us bloom again—differently, maybe more quietly, but no less brilliantly.

With love from the mountains,

Cynthia

MedicineWoods Botanicals