Walk With Me, Week Five: The Need to Be Needed

For four weeks, Walk With Me has taken us to gardens, parks, libraries and gathering places where people make room for one another. This week, across Missouri, Tennessee and North Carolina, took us deeper into why all of it matters.

We spoke with researchers studying how loneliness is linked to depression, anxiety and suicide risk. We met people carrying grief and moving through big life changes, and we found communities giving people the chance to contribute and feel valued.

One idea kept rising to the surface: We all need people we can count on. We also need to know that others can count on us.

Day 25: St. Charles, Missouri

Our week began with a conversation about how widespread loneliness is and what it can mean for our health. Dr. Salma Abdalla is a physician and public health researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Sudan, she became curious about the wider conditions that shape health after watching children return to the hospital again and again for problems that medical care alone couldn't prevent. That question led her to study the social and economic conditions that affect health, including loneliness.

In a study of nearly 8,000 adults across eight countries, Salma and her colleagues found that nearly 39% had felt lonely at some point in the previous year. People who reported loneliness had about three times the odds of screening positive for depression and nearly four times the odds of screening positive for generalized anxiety. The study can't establish that loneliness causes either condition. It does show a troubling relationship between loneliness and mental health across very different countries and populations.

It also tells us loneliness belongs to every age. Nearly half of respondents ages 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely in the previous year, compared with about 30% of those 55 and older. Salma talked about how hard early adulthood can be. Young people leave familiar communities, move to new places and lose many of the relationships that school and family once provided. She knows that experience firsthand. When she moved from Sudan to Boston, she struggled to find her place and to build relationships with people who understood where she came from.

One of Salma's most important observations was about money. Connection takes resources. Hosting dinner, joining an activity and even meeting a friend for coffee all cost something. Her research found loneliness was more common among people with lower incomes. She also asked us to look at how we've designed modern life. Long drives alone and errands done from home have made life more convenient, and they've also removed many of the everyday moments that once brought us into contact with other people.

For Salma, the stakes reach beyond individual well-being. She worries about what happens to a society when people lose trust in one another, and she believes lasting change will take a movement. "I can write all the papers in the world, but that's not going to cut it," she told us. "We need to create a movement of people who believe this is one of the biggest challenges of our time."

Later that day, we visited Bike Stop Cafe along the Katy Trail and saw what that movement can look like in an everyday gathering place. The cafe draws cyclists from around the world along with locals who come back again and again, some to ride, some to volunteer and some because the people there have become part of their lives.

We met Gerard, a retired volunteer and bike repairman who described a community built on familiar faces, shared experiences and people who check on one another. Gerard knows he matters there because people would notice if he stopped showing up. "I want to build bridges, not walls," he told us. "Love is the greatest gift."

Day 26: St. Charles, Missouri

Our second day in St. Charles brought conversations about aging, grief and what happens when the relationships that once shaped our lives begin to shift. We met with the city's Senior Citizen Advisory Council, whose members work to understand the challenges older residents face. One member told us about a woman who put a swing in her yard and invited lonely neighbors to come over whenever they wanted company.

Another story was harder to hear. A man who had always been part of family activities found that his children and grandchildren had built lives and routines that included him less and less. He began to wonder whether he still mattered to them. "Am I significant to anybody anymore?" A person can have family, friends and a lifetime of relationships and still begin to feel their presence no longer matters.

At the St. Charles Senior Center, we met Glenn and Joyce, a couple whose story shows how closely connection and physical health are linked. Glenn, who is 93, noticed his wife was losing a worrying amount of weight. They had been receiving home-delivered meals, and he decided to start bringing Joyce to the senior center for lunch every day. With regular meals and people around her, Joyce began doing much better and regained the weight she needed.

"I was lonely, and he figured it out for me," she told us. The meals mattered, and Joyce also needed the company and daily rhythm that came with sharing them.

We also met Joan Bauer. Joan lost her husband, Gary, about six years ago. During his cognitive decline, they took part in Memory Cafe programs together, and after he died, Joan kept volunteering there.

She told us one of the hardest parts of losing Gary was coming home to a house where he was no longer waiting. Even now, she sometimes walks through the door and calls out, "Gary, I'm home." Joan carries that grief openly, and volunteering has given her a way to be part of the lives of people going through something she understands. "I need to fill my heart with something since Gary's gone," she said.

She described her place at Memory Cafe as feeling "like a permanent brick," somewhere she is known, valued and part of something that lasts. Joan showed us how helping others can become part of finding purpose after a profound loss, as she carries her love for Gary into this new chapter.

Day 27: Meeting Up Brooke in Nashville

On Wednesday, we spent time with someone whose journey looked a lot like our own. Brooke Johnson recently became the first woman to skateboard across the country, sharing her experience along the way and building a community of people who followed and supported her.

Lucy and Brooke, a generation apart, found common ground almost immediately. Both know what it's like to cross the country with a mission, spend long hours on the road with a team and meet people whose stories change how you see the world. They talked for hours.

Brooke also widened our thinking about technology. She has used social media to build a community around shared experiences, including chances for people who met online to spend time together in person.

Her journey brought unexpected kindness from strangers, too. She told us about a woman who approached her with suspicion and, after learning why she was traveling, handed her $100. Support from someone you just met can mean a great deal when you're attempting something hard.

Their conversation also had us thinking about the transitions that keep coming throughout adulthood, when finding what comes next can mean rebuilding parts of ourselves. By the end of the day, Lucy and Brooke had formed a friendship neither expected when they set out on their journeys. Their shared experiences gave them a place to begin.

Day 28: Nashville, Tennessee

In Nashville, we met singer-songwriter Abby Nissenbaum, whose music explores loneliness, loss and the search for belonging. Abby has a background in social psychology, and she draws on that and on her own life when she writes, hoping listeners recognize something of themselves in her songs.

"Music in itself is almost a relationship," she told us. She spoke openly about her own experiences with loneliness and depression, and about the particular challenges LGBTQ+ people can face when looking for relationships in places where they may not always feel accepted.

One of the most striking parts of our conversation was about friendship. Abby believes our friendships deserve the same care we give romantic relationships, because losing a close friend can hurt every bit as much. "Losing a friend versus losing a partner can hit the same way," she said. When important friendships ended, she felt as though part of her own history had gone with them.

Abby is also working to build community in Nashville. "I have people I could call at 2 a.m. But they're not in Nashville," she told us. She values those long-distance friendships, and she also wants someone nearby to spend an ordinary afternoon with. She wishes Nashville had more affordable gathering places where people can spend time without being expected to buy something, an echo of what Salma told us about the cost of taking part.

For anyone who worries about being a burden, Abby had encouragement. People often want to hear from us more than we realize, and asking for connection is a real and legitimate human need.

Day 29: Nashville, Tennessee

On Friday, we met Dr. Katherine Schafer, a clinical psychologist and suicide prevention researcher at Vanderbilt. Her work on suicide risk, including what researchers call thwarted belongingness, the experience of wanting meaningful relationships and feeling unable to find them, led her to look closely at loneliness.

That work gave us one of the biggest lightbulb moments of the journey. In a study of over 62,500 American adults, Katherine and her colleagues found that loneliness accounted for part of the link between symptoms of depression and anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Katherine described loneliness as an "active ingredient" that can stir up existing anxiety and depression. Because the study looked at one moment in time, it can't establish that loneliness causes suicidal thoughts or that easing loneliness alone would prevent them. It does suggest loneliness plays an important role in understanding suicide risk, and it gives us reason to hope that easing loneliness can be part of prevention alongside other approaches.

Her work speaks to wider health picture, too. The World Health Organization links loneliness to stroke, heart disease, diabetes, depression, anxiety and early death, and its 2025 report found that about 871,000 deaths worldwide each year are linked to loneliness and social isolation.

Katherine's work also raises a question about how we respond. Clinicians often ask patients who they can reach out to when life gets hard. Who can you call? Who will support you in a crisis? Those relationships are essential, and Katherine's research led her to add another question. "Who do we contribute to? Who do we give to?"

She described how painful it can be to feel like a burden, to believe the people around us would be better off without us or that we have nothing to offer. Knowing that someone benefits from our presence, values what we do or depends on us can strengthen our sense of purpose and belonging. Contribution works in both directions. We need to be able to receive care, and we need chances to give it. "It's giving to the world around you and accepting of the world around you," she said.

Meaningful relationships, she told us, grow through the ordinary moments that fill most of our lives. Helping someone who dropped something. Holding a door. Listening when a loved one wants to share something. Noticing a contribution that might otherwise go unseen. "Life is lived in these crossing moments of connection," she said.

We ended our conversation talking about what researchers call bids for connection, the brief moments when one person reaches toward another for attention, warmth or interest. In a marriage, she explained, bids that are noticed and returned are linked to happier, healthier and longer relationships. Bids that are repeatedly turned away can leave a partner lonely, and they are linked to higher rates of divorce.

Those everyday moments don't replace the deeper relationships people need, and they aren't a cure for chronic loneliness. We also need relationships where we can be vulnerable, share our hardest thoughts and trust that someone will stay with us through them. We need both: the everyday moments that remind us we matter and the lasting relationships where we know we belong. Katherine believes public health should care about whether people are living meaningful, fulfilling lives, and that belonging, purpose and the chance to contribute are at the heart of that.

After the interview, we walked about 12 miles with Lucy's friend Debbie Faires. On this same day five years ago, Debbie joined Lucy and others on a 500-mile walk for Salem Academy and College, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which made her return especially meaningful. Cold rain and stretches of Nashville without safe places to walk reminded us that connection depends on individual choices and on whether our communities make it possible to come together.

Near the end of the day, we came across a driveway stand where a woman had left homemade granola for anyone passing by. We had spent the morning talking about contribution, and here was a neighbor quietly sharing something with her community.

Day 30: Tennessee

The next day, an unplanned conversation brought Katherine's ideas to life through a different kind of relationship. We met Danielle Etzel, a dog trainer and entrepreneur, who talked with us about how dogs help people find companionship, purpose and community.

Walking a dog gets people outside and into regular contact with others. A stranger stops to ask about the dog, and a conversation begins around something both people are comfortable talking about. She even met her fiancé while helping search for a neighbor's lost dog.

Danielle also talked about the purpose that comes with caring for an animal. For someone who is isolated, especially an older adult, those responsibilities can bring structure and a reason to engage with the world beyond home. The relationship runs both ways. The dog depends on the person, and the person receives companionship and affection in return. For some people in hard times, being responsible for another living creature has been a reason to keep going. It brought us back to Katherine's question. Knowing we are needed can change how we understand our own lives.

We also spent more time with Debbie, and Lucy loved introducing her old friend to people who have become part of her life on this walk. One introduction can start a relationship that would never have existed otherwise. Debbie showed us what showing up looks like, too. She made the effort to come back, and that kind of commitment says something without words: I care about you, and what you're doing matters to me.

Day 31: Asheville, North Carolina

We ended the week in the Asheville area at Annie B's Homemade Ice Cream, where we met Pete Brewer and heard how he and his wife, Betsy, built a business with a purpose that reaches well beyond ice cream. Their daughter, Annie, has an intellectual disability. As she approached adulthood, Pete and Betsy began thinking about what would come after school and where she would find work, community and fulfillment. They decided to create those opportunities themselves. Annie B's employs adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in a place where they are supported, challenged and trusted.

Pete was clear about the standard. They make high-quality ice cream, and they believe their employees can meet the same expectations as anyone else. The work is deliberately built around contribution, with employees making ice cream, serving customers and keeping the business running.

Pete wants every employee to know they are essential. "You matter. We need you. Without you, we struggle." He has watched them grow in responsibility and independence. "They've got this. They don't need me," he told us. Those words took us straight back to Katherine.

We also met Tyler, who works at Annie B's while attending culinary school. He talked about feeling lonely in high school and how hard it was to find people he could trust. At Annie B's, he has built friendships and rediscovered his passion for cooking. Knowing he can give back to the people who have supported him has become part of what makes those relationships meaningful.

Pete also told us about the Cookie Project, where people with disabilities bake cookies that are shared through organizations serving people facing food insecurity. People with disabilities bring talents, interests and a desire to make a difference in others' lives, and Pete wants them included every time we talk about belonging. They want to work, learn, grow, contribute and be recognized for what they bring. It was a fitting place to end a week that kept bringing us back to the need to be needed.

What we're noticing

This week had us thinking about what happens inside our relationships. People need support, and they need chances to offer it. They need to feel cared for and to know their care matters to someone else. They need places where they are welcome and where they have something meaningful to contribute.

Those needs become even more important when we consider the health effects of long-term loneliness. Research continues to link loneliness to serious physical and mental health risks, including depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. The barriers people face are bigger than any one person, and lasting change will take sustained effort from health care, institutions and communities alike.

This week also showed us how much everyday relationships shape belonging. Glenn noticed Joyce needed company along with her meals. Joan found purpose in helping others through a loss she knows well. And at Annie B's, we watched people build confidence and belonging through work that lets them contribute.

The chance to take part, contribute and know that our presence matters can enrich our lives and strengthen our relationships. We've spent weeks asking how we help people find connection. Now we're also asking how we build communities where everyone has the chance to matter to someone else.

Next, our journey continues through North Carolina, including more time around Asheville, Winston-Salem, High Point and Greensboro, before we head north toward Washington, D.C., and New York City.

If there's someone we should meet along the way, or a place in your community where people already come together, tell us.

And on Nov. 12, join us for the first National Day of Connection. At noon, take 12 minutes with someone you want to know better.