When We Stop Pretending, We Stop Being Alone

By Suzanne Suleiman - President

We live in a world obsessed with polish.

Curated feeds. Perfect smiles. Stories trimmed of their jagged edges.

But the parts of us that we hide—the messy, complicated, unfinished parts—are often the very ones that connect us most deeply.

I learned this the hard way.

The Fire That Shaped Me

I was not born into ease. I was the third daughter in a family still aching for a son, raised in a house where love and violence shared the same table. Silence was often the currency of survival.

At twelve years old, I broke that silence. I dialed the police as my sister bled from my father’s hands. The violence stopped that night, but the cost was my father’s resentment—a wound I carried long after the bruises faded.

Later, as an adult, I bent myself into smallness for a man who promised love but delivered control. And then came the turning point: the birth of my daughter. In her eyes, I saw both my own fragility and my responsibility. A sacred rage ignited inside me. It told me: She will not inherit my silence.

That rage became my spine. It has been my fuel ever since.

The Softness That Survived

Rage may have carried me, but it did not consume me. Beneath it lived a tenderness that refused extinction—a longing for love, for belonging, for connection untainted by fear.

I dream of a world where daughters bloom without apology.

Where women sit in circles and remember their worth together.

Where loneliness is not a life sentence, but a season we walk through—together.

A Universal Invitation

So this is me: fierce and tender, storm and sanctuary.

Rage that refuses to die quietly, and love that refuses to stop blooming.

And here is my invitation: bring your whole self too. The polished parts and the fractured parts. The fire and the seed. Because when we stop pretending, we stop being alone.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just personal—it’s public health.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on Loneliness declared loneliness a national epidemic, noting: “Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight—one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive lives.”

Decades of research echo this truth: authenticity and social connection are not luxuries. They are as vital to health as nutrition or exercise, tied to lower rates of anxiety, depression, even premature death.

And yet, so many of us keep hiding behind performance.

What I’ve learned—both from my own survival and from years as a therapist—is that authenticity is not simply vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake. It’s medicine. It’s the soil where happiness, healing, and community grow.

The Work Ahead

I share my story not to dramatize, but to demonstrate. Because what healed me wasn’t perfection—it was presence. What gave me strength wasn’t silence—it was truth.

We are lonelier than ever, but we don’t have to be.

If we dare to show up whole—fire, softness, and all—we can rewrite what connection looks like in this generation.

This is the work I’ve given my life to: as a therapist, as the president of a nonprofit dedicated to women’s connection, and as an ambassador for the Foundation for Social Connection. It is both my profession and my promise.

And it begins with this: telling the truth about who we are.

P.S. You are not alone.