This is hard to write. I feel like a split persona: a survivor of social isolation as well as founder and program manager for CSIR. As the latter, maybe this blog should always be about CSIR. And yet, if I were not a survivor, I would not be manager. I cannot let this recent review in Psychiatric’s Journal go unappreciated or unrecognized. Please bear with me.

I will always be both the survivor and the manager. The social isolation that enveloped my life for fifty years thankfully is gone and I walk out in the open amongst my peers mainly as a very happy person. But the pain from being alone all those years exists still. It can be very hurtful when activated.

I can still feel my little self, on the school playground and in the dining room, my insides imploring, “Help me!” My poor self, all alone, with no one to talk with, my lonely self, with no one to be with. I sit, eyes averted, fixed on a table, a bench, a tree. I wait, I wait, I wait in frozen silence; I wait. I wait, for the bell to ring. Teachers! See us! Help us! Give us what we need to be “like the other children!”

The recent review of my memoir in the American Psychiatric Association’s monthly journal, (http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.671009?mobileUi=0&) validates my writing; acknowledges the pain and I feel impelled to let everyone know.

Every socially isolated person feels this pain and it is important to know that it will remain a part of us. It is a part of our humanity! It won’t go away but we can make the social isolation go away, have friendships and be part of community.

We can heal. The pain though, remains. What should we survivors do with it? How should we feel about it? Let’s collect our thoughts and start a dialogue. Acknowledging the pain in detail with other adults, might very well be a springboard to a successful cure for social isolation!