Walk With Me, Week Six: What It Takes to Belong

Across North Carolina last week, one idea kept resurfacing: connection depends on what happens after people walk into the same space. Festivals, parks, programs and gathering places create chances for people to meet. Belonging grows from something deeper. People need to feel welcomed, recognized and valued, and they need relationships that give them a reason to come back.

That matters because chronic loneliness is a public health crisis, and the evidence keeps growing. Four in 10 U.S. adults report moderate to severe loneliness, according to RAND and The Connection Institute. Research by Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad has found that loneliness increases the risk of early death by 26%. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates that about 100 people die every hour from causes linked to loneliness and social isolation. Behind every one of those numbers are people, people experiencing chronic loneliness and people working to address it, and this week we met many of them.

This week, we heard about trust between neighbors, the lasting mark of feeling like an outsider, the shame that can make loneliness hard to admit and the physical barriers that keep people from community. We also met people creating real, practical ways for others to feel seen, known and part of something.

Day 32: Asheville

Our week began in Asheville with a conversation shaped by Hurricane Helene. We met Bridget Herring, director of Asheville's Office of Recovery and Resilience, and Kiera Bulan, the city's sustainability manager, to understand what the disaster revealed about the relationships that hold a community together.

Asheville "couldn't have survived Helene without each other," Kiera told us. Neighbors brought water and supplies, shared equipment, cleared roads and checked on people who had been cut off. One person with a bicycle picked up city updates, made copies and carried them through the neighborhood. Residents formed human chains to move supplies, and people who knew an older neighbor lived farther down the road made sure someone went to check on her. When the usual systems broke down, relationships became part of the response. For an older adult living alone at the end of a washed-out road, a neighbor who knew to knock could be how help arrived at all. Connection is a health issue every day. In a disaster, it can be a matter of survival.

Kiera described what she called "a million micro networks," the neighborhoods, clubs, organizations, gathering places and informal groups already woven through Asheville. Those networks helped the city reach residents faster, and they also showed where access was uneven. Members of the deaf community, people with disabilities and residents who speak English as a second language sometimes faced extra hurdles getting information and help.

As Asheville rebuilds, the city is investing in its Community Hub Network. Its Resilience Hub Mapping Project documented how trusted community spaces and organizations responded during Helene, with the goal of strengthening those networks on ordinary "blue sky" days so they're ready when the next crisis comes. A trusted gathering place can take many forms. Depending on the neighborhood, it might be a community center, a park, a church, a convenience store or someone's home. What matters is that people know where to go, who to trust and how to reach one another.

Kiera was honest about how hard it is to sustain that level of connection once everyday routines return. During Helene, people saw right away how much they needed one another. As work, schedules and responsibilities picked back up, staying engaged got harder. It left us thinking about how communities can strengthen those relationships before the next emergency makes them essential again.

That night, we visited the Asheville Hockey League, whose longtime rink at Carrier Park was destroyed by Helene. The league rebuilt elsewhere with donated materials, volunteer labor and community support, restoring a place where generations of players have built friendships and routines together. Vice President Daniel Dean told us about a decision the league makes every season. Adult teams are mixed on purpose, so players compete against someone one season and play alongside them the next. Hockey brings people into the same place, and the way the league is built gives those relationships room to grow.

Day 33: Asheville to Black Mountain

The next day, on the walk in Black Mountain, the smell of fresh bread pulled us into Nutmeg. We planned to grab something to eat and ended up spending much of the afternoon with owner Adrienne Welch and her children, Niah, Bear and Orie.

Adrienne wants Nutmeg to feel a little more like 1926 than 2026. For her, that means slowing down enough to notice the people who come through the door. Even with customers waiting, she tries to hear their stories. Some regulars barely buy anything. They come because people know them, talk with them and make room for them. "Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone gets asked," the family told us. Large efforts to address loneliness matter, and so do the daily moments when one person chooses to notice another.

The Welch children talked about seeing someone sitting alone in a cafeteria and being willing to walk over. "Invite them to the table," they said. Bear, who recently started at a new school, knows that feeling well. She remembered another girl coming up to her in the hallway and asking if they could walk together because she didn't want to walk alone. Moments like that matter. With four in 10 adults reporting moderate to severe loneliness, the habits of reaching out, or pulling away, often take shape long before adulthood.

They also talked honestly about technology and attention. One of the boys described using video games to distract himself from loneliness until he realized the habit was keeping him from the people and moments around him. Another had noticed how automatically he reached for his phone when class ended and started questioning that pull. Both were learning to be intentional with their attention and to notice when something pulls them away from the people right in front of them.

At Nutmeg, slowing down is part of the culture. "Let's sit around and talk story," Adrienne said. In a world built more and more around speed and convenience, her family is creating a place where people have time to become familiar to one another.

Day 34: Black Mountain to Old Fort

In Old Fort, Tonia Plummer showed us how deeply belonging can be tied to place, history and the people who know our story. Tonia grew up surrounded by family and neighbors who looked after one another. They moved in and out of each other's homes, gathered for cookouts, played softball after church and grew food together. "We knew our neighbors," she told us. "Our neighbors protected us."

Those relationships carried special weight because Tonia grew up under segregation. She was bused to the only Black school in McDowell County. There were stores she couldn't enter through the front door and lunch counters where she couldn't sit. Her family and neighbors created their own spaces for safety, joy, identity and belonging, and they made sure she knew who she was, where she came from and who would look out for her.

Through People on the Move for Old Fort, Tonia has worked to preserve the stories and contributions of Old Fort's Black community, including helping bring to life a prominent mural honoring its civil rights history. "Our souls are in the dirt here," she told us.

Tonia also worries about what has happened to some of the relationships that once held her village together. People spend more time inside their homes. Families have moved away for work and school. Generations live farther apart, and community gatherings are harder to sustain. She wants people to know their neighbors again, and she believes it begins with listening.

"I don't think we listen enough," Tonia said. "There are hurting people everywhere, and all they want is someone to listen to them. Sometimes all you have to do is just sit with them and let them know that you're there for them."

Helene brought those relationships back into focus. When roads and bridges closed and Tonia was cut off, neighbors cleared fallen trees and helped one another find food and supplies. "Your survival may depend on your next-door neighbor," she told us. Her story echoed what we heard two days earlier in Asheville. Trust is strongest when it has been built over time, long before a crisis asks people to depend on one another. Tonia helped us see what belonging looks like when people know one another well enough to notice, listen, remember and respond.

Day 35: Winston-Salem

After more than five weeks on the road, Lucy came home to Winston-Salem carrying stories that have given the scale of loneliness in this country a human face. Dozens of people joined us downtown for a group walk through the city, including a meaningful stop at Salem College, Lucy's alma mater and a place that has shaped much of her life.

That stop connected Walk With Me to another journey. In 2021, Lucy was one of five through-walkers who retraced the historic route of the Moravian Single Sisters, walking 500 miles over 29 days from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. That journey ended at Salem. Five years later, another long walk brought her back through the same campus.

After meeting with Salem faculty and staff, we went on to East of Texas, where Lucy shared what she has heard since leaving California. Strangers have stopped her because of her Walk With Me shirt and asked whether she would listen to their stories. They have talked about loneliness, grief, addiction, isolation and the need to know they matter to someone. "People are so hungry just to be seen, just to know that they matter to somebody," Lucy told the group.

She also shared one of the clearest lessons of the journey so far. Communities can create many chances for people to gather, and some people will still struggle to feel connected. Through this, we’ve grown more and more interested in what happens once someone arrives. Can they get there? Does someone welcome them? Can they take part without already knowing someone? Do repeated visits give them a chance to become familiar? Does showing up eventually lead to a relationship? Those questions matter if we're serious about treating loneliness as a public health issue, because people need chances to become known.

Day 36: Winston-Salem

The next day, Lucy brought that conversation to Salem College's Health Leadership Forum in a fireside chat with President Jill Fleuriet. The conversation centered on restoring connection as a foundation for individual and community well-being, and Lucy took on another barrier we've met all along the way: the shame of admitting loneliness.

"We must be able to say 'I'm lonely' without feeling like I'm also a loser," Lucy said. "Because let me just say, you're not."

That message is personal for Lucy. She lived with chronic loneliness during a life that looked full from the outside, with a successful career, family, friends and constant interaction with other people. Her story is one reason we've learned to be careful about assuming we know who is lonely. Loneliness can live inside lives that look busy, successful and socially active. And when admitting it feels like admitting failure, people tend to hide what they're going through and become less likely to reach out for support. That silence carries a real cost. The longer loneliness goes unspoken, the longer it can wear on a person's mental and physical health. Shame keeps people from the very help that could protect them.

Lucy offered a place to start. When we ask someone how they're doing, we can pause long enough to truly care about the answer. "If we do that, I think folks will know they belong," she said. "They'll know you believe they matter to you."

That evening, we carried that message into Winston-Salem's Witches Walk, where we invited people to write postcards to someone who might need to hear that they matter. It was a small gesture, and it connected directly to what we've heard across the country. People want to know that someone thought of them, noticed them and cares whether they're there.

Day 37: Winston-Salem to High Point

On Saturday, the built environment was right under our feet. Walking from outside Winston-Salem toward High Point, much of our route followed roads with no sidewalks and barely a shoulder. In parts of California and Colorado, we had followed pedestrian paths that linked neighborhoods, communities and even whole cities, and this stretch felt very different.

Walking those roads had us thinking again about how the places we build shape isolation. Someone who can't drive may have fewer ways to reach a gathering place, visit a friend or take part in community life. A destination can be close on a map and still hard to reach safely on foot. The World Health Organization names weak community resources, including limited transportation, parks and leisure spaces, among the factors that can contribute to loneliness and social isolation.

That evening, we found a very different setting at Smitty and Pearl's, a new dining and entertainment complex in High Point built around many ways to gather. There were restaurants, bars, bowling, games, community tables and quieter corners where conversation came more naturally, so people could spend time together however they liked. The music, games, screens, food and activity also reminded us how many things compete for our attention even when we're in the same room. It added another layer to the question we'd been asking all week: once people are in the same place, what helps them truly connect?

Day 38: High Point to Greensboro

We ended the week with someone who remembers exactly what it feels like to search for a place to belong and not find one. Saya Hillman, founder of Mac & Cheese Productions, described herself as a kid who was different, quiet and deeply unsure of herself. Middle school was especially lonely. She still remembers standing in the cafeteria looking for somewhere to sit and not seeing a friendly face to invite her in. "It gets in your bones and it stays there forever," she told us.

That experience shaped Saya's work. She decided to become the person she had needed back then. At networking events, she encourages people standing in circles to leave an opening so someone new can step in. Her "un-networking" experiences are designed for people who find traditional networking uncomfortable, creating spaces where they can show up more fully as themselves.

Saya also talked about how admitting what we're going through can help someone else realize they aren't alone. "When people share what's hard for them to share, it's a gift," she said. When someone admits they're lonely, that honesty gives another person permission to say, "Me too." It tied right back to Lucy's message at Salem the day before. Loneliness gets harder to address when people believe it says something shameful about them.

Through improv, Saya learned the power of naming discomfort out loud, admitting she feels awkward or lonely and asking if she can join someone. She believes making friends as an adult is hard for everyone, and much of her work creates clearer ways into relationships. One example is Mac & Cheese's Fear Experiment, where participants sign up on their own, spend months learning an art form that scares them and finish with a performance in an adult recital. Along the way, they build skills, friendships, confidence and a bigger sense of what's possible.

Saya describes three kinds of connection: connection to other people, to opportunities and to ourselves. Each one strengthens the others. "The more connected I feel, the more whole I feel," she said. She measures the success of a gathering by whether someone leaves feeling seen and believing they mattered.

We finished the afternoon on a greenway between High Point and Greensboro, much of it through the woods on paved paths and boardwalks. After the roads of the day before, it was another reminder that the spaces around us shape whether people can leave home, run into one another and take part in community life.

What we've noticed

Six weeks in, we're thinking more about what turns a chance to gather into a real sense of belonging. This week offered several answers. Belonging can grow when a neighbor knows you well enough to check on you, when a bakery owner remembers your story, when someone notices you standing alone and makes room at the table, or when a community makes it safe to admit you're struggling.

The conditions around people matter, too. Transportation and walkable streets shape who can get where. Trusted gathering places give relationships somewhere to grow. Organizations can make it easier for newcomers to find their way in. Repeated encounters give people time to become familiar to one another.

We watched people act on all of it this week. Asheville is strengthening trusted community networks before another disaster requires them. The Asheville Hockey League mixes its teams so players build relationships across the whole league. Adrienne Welch and her family make listening part of everyday life at Nutmeg. Tonia Plummer is preserving her community's history and encouraging neighbors to know one another again. Lucy is working to lift the shame from saying "I'm lonely." Saya Hillman designs every gathering with the person standing alone in mind.

Behind every one of those efforts is a need we've heard all across the country. People want to be seen, known and valued, and they want to feel there is a place for them.

Six weeks on the road have made one thing impossible to ignore. Chronic loneliness is a public health crisis hiding in plain sight. It lives in the girl alone in the cafeteria, the older neighbor at the end of a washed-out road, the regular who comes to the bakery mostly to be known and the successful professional who smiles through every meeting and goes home to silence. Like every public health challenge, it calls for action from all of us: health systems, employers, schools, city planners, community groups, families and neighbors. Creating chances to gather is the first step. Helping people build the relationships and sense of belonging that protect their health is what makes a community feel like home, and what keeps people well.

Next, our journey takes us through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., as we continue north toward New York. We'll keep walking, and we'll keep listening.

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.