The Loneliness of Being Lonely
I know I lead a privileged life – and a very happy one – but let’s not pretend it's all rosy. I chose to marry into a farming life and here’s what I would have liked to have really thought about before I got married. The hours are long, the work is hard, the farm becomes your life, you will lose hours to the weather, and there is never enough money. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
What I would change – the feeling of loneliness when everyone is out working and I’m at home.
And it is lonely. That’s the bit no one really tells you. You hear about how tough farming is. You hear about long days, broken sleep, calving at 3am, harvest pressure, and muck everywhere. But no one talks about how isolating it can be when you’re not the one driving the tractor but you are the one keeping everything else going.
You become the default for everything that isn’t the farm. You do the school runs. You book the dentist appointments. You keep the house clean, the bills paid, the birthdays remembered, and the fridge full. You become the one who picks up the pieces when the vet’s running late, the stock are out, or the baler breaks down and tea is delayed by hours. Again.
And most of the time you don’t mind. This is the life we signed up for. It’s a partnership – of sorts. You chip in where you can. You don’t complain. You get on with it. You know its worth it all.
But there are moments – many – when you look around and realise you might not have had a proper adult conversation in days. You find yourself cooking dinner for people who can't come in until well after dark, if at all. You wash overalls you didn’t wear, and you put kids to bed alone. Again.
You try not to resent it. Because they’re working hard too. But that doesn’t make it easier when you're eating dinner on your own for the third night in a row, or when the only other adult you’ve spoken to all day is the woman at the farm shop checkout or Aldi.
People talk about loneliness like it can be reserved for the elderly or people who live alone. But you can be surrounded by family and still feel entirely alone. That’s the kind of loneliness no one warns you about.
Do I want to be stuck on a tractor 24/7? No. Not a hope. But would I like to see my family during daylight hours now and then? Yes, of course I realise I can go to the field or the yard, I often do.
It’s the in-between that’s hard. You’re not fully on the farm, but you’re not separate from it either. You’re not employed by the business, but it still shapes every day of your life. You might not be in the big decision-making process, but you still carry the impact of those decisions. You are relied on but can sometimes feel invisible.
And I know I’m not alone in this. I know there are others – mostly women – who feel the same. We don’t need sympathy. We don’t want a pat on the head. What we want is for people to stop pretending it’s easy. We want the space to say, “this is hard,” without someone immediately replying, “yes, but it’s worth it.”
We know it’s worth it. We’re still here, aren’t we?
But we also need some practical changes. That might look like carving out regular time each week to see friends, even if it means asking for help to do it. Or joining a local or online group of others in the same boat – not to moan, but to feel seen. For equestrian women, it might just be making time to ride out with a friend once a week – not to train, not to compete – just to switch off and enjoy the company.
We know we love our lifestyles and we are part of the farm – often a huge part at that. But for those of us who work outside the farm, or have chosen a different career, it’s also OK to feel lonely. And it’s OK to own that feeling, instead of burying it.
Even in the happiest of homes, with the strongest of relationships, and the most beautiful of views, you can feel completely, utterly, and silently alone.
And that’s not weakness. That’s truth.
