Struggling to Find “Your People”?

“Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is the absence of alignment.” – Richard Rohr

Non-members can read here.

There are times in life when you feel surrounded by people and yet strangely alone.

I’ve been there a lot lately.

On paper, I have “friends.” People to hang out with, laugh with, exchange pleasantries with.

But deep down, it doesn’t feel aligned. Not the way it used to with my best friends — the ones who live miles away now. With them, I never had to explain myself. They just got me. And when you’ve once tasted that kind of connection, everything else feels a little shallow in comparison.

I’m grateful that I have my partner, of course. He’s my anchor. But our relationship is long distance, which makes the hunger for aligned connections in my day-to-day life even sharper. We as a society dont talk about it enough. Love can ground you, but it can’t completely replace the need for a circle — friends, peers, community , people who share your wavelength.

The truth is, not finding people who align with you can feel like you’re starving in the middle of a feast. You’re surrounded by conversations, parties, and social media feeds, but something feels missing. Because it is.

But here’s what I’ve learned: this emptiness is an invitation. An invitation to get to know yourself on a deeper level, to stop outsourcing your identity to other people, and to figure out who you really are without a crowd around you.

There’s a certain power in walking alone for a while.

You begin to see your patterns, your desires, your rhythms.

Journaling has been one of my biggest tools for this . It feels like building a friendship with myself. And the more I accept who I am, the easier it becomes to spot people who do align with me when they finally show up.

I’ve also started learning the value of micro-connections. The smile exchanged with a stranger, the casual chat with someone at the gym, the small kindnesses that remind you that we’re all human. Not every bond has to be soul-deep to matter. These little moments don’t replace your “tribe,” but they do make the in-between feel less empty.

And maybe that’s what this season of life is about: patience.

Trusting that the people who align with you will arrive in time, but also not putting your life on hold until they do.

Learning to be content with yourself, building your passions, pouring into your growth. Because when you do meet the people who truly align with you, they won’t have to complete you rather they’ll just complement the person you’ve already become.

So if you’re in that in-between space, like me, where your closest people are far away and your current connections don’t feel deep enough, know this: you’re not broken. You’re not failing at life. You’re just in a season of transition. And it will pass.

Sometimes, the greatest alignment you can find is with yourself , and from there, everything else will follow.

— Anushka & Vishnu 🐾

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.