“Who wants to share what they’re taking away from this weekend?”

I scanned the room. Deep, maroon carpet. Dark wooden walls. High, vaulted ceilings. And quiet chair after chair, a sea of silent woman.

We’d gathered for a weekend women’s retreat, coming together to share stories, ideas, and encouragement. Keynote speakers discussed big ideas. We met in small groups to dive more deeply into different topics. Mealtimes were spent debriefing, or just making small talk. We were all striving, side-by-side with fellow strangers (acquaintances at best) to uncover new truths, learn how to live better lives, and, ultimately, leave inspired. Really, though, our core purpose was to create true connection so we could accomplish any one of those things.

Now, in our final minutes, we all joined forces one last time. This was the time to bear our souls, souls supposedly overflowing with prodigious insights from the 36 hours together.

One woman stood up. She shared a learning. Then another. And another. Their answers were earnest. Their conviction, apparent. Perhaps they were speaking straight from the heart. But the words themselves were just synopses of different presentations. Woman after woman, repeating, regurgitating what had already been said.

Bullshit, I thought. Surface-level bullshit.

Here we are, a crowd of smart, strong, capable women together under one roof with one common purpose, and no one has the balls to share what we all must be thinking, what I know so many of us are deeply feeling.

I wanted to stand up. I wanted to say something!

But I didn’t. I was glued to the chair. I let the moment pass; I let the parrots speak. I stayed silent.

The words I so desperately wanted to say have been on the tip of my tongue ever since. My biggest learning, my greatest takeaway from that weekend wasn’t from any single talk or breakout group. My revelation came from observing the women, the participants.

“What I’m taking away from this weekend,” my heart’s continued to scream, “is we’re all alone, together. I walked into the retreat feeling so deeply lonely. I’m not leaving feeling any less lonely; I am leaving knowing I am not alone in my loneliness. So many of us here are suffering. We’re together in feeling alone. We are alone, together.”

If I could go back in time, that’s what I would stand up and say.

Ever since that realization, the stark admittance of my own loneliness and the shock of how commonplace this plague of loneliness really is, running rampant and hurting so many hearts, I’ve longed to make it better. My soul yearns for a place of true connection and community for each of those women–and millions more.