Fear of being alone is not just about loneliness—although that’s a big part of it--it’s more like fear of being parachuted into a foreign land, behind enemy lines,  where you don’t know the landscape, don’t speak the language,  have no idea how to find the nearest convenience store and are afraid of  non-combatants taking pot shots at you.    It’s damned scary for any woman, and for us older women, especially those of us who have been married our entire adult lives, it can be downright terrifying.

      We women make the mistake of assuming that being alone is bad.  Actually,  aloneness is a neutral state, says Florence Falk, author of On My Own; The Art of Being a Woman Alone.   “If you can begin to take away the coloration which is almost always negative, you won’t automatically interchange it with loneliness.    Aloneness is part of the human condition.  One of the ways we get in touch with ourselves is to really enter aloneness, from there finding our way into solitude.  It is frightening at first.   You need to reframe it to get over the fear.  Think of the experience of peace you get walking on a beach, reading, taking yoga, anywhere there’s silence and not a lot of distractions.  Our culture is endlessly fueling us to be distracted, to buy more, use that cell phone, turn on the TV or computer, anything to keep us temporarily occupied and temporarily satisfied.  That’s what you’re bucking when you try to experience solitude in a positive way. “