Sale Alerts for The Great Belonging

*Sale Alerts for The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other⁣*
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1. Broadleaf Books
20% off and free shipping using code BLHOLIDAY20⁣.
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2. Hearts and Minds Books is selling The Great Belonging and several other books mentioned in their BookNotes posts at 20% off. AND please read all of the wonderful things Byron wrote about the book in this week’s BookNotes.😍⁣
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3. Bookshop.org has free shipping for the next few days. If you don’t have a local bookstore to tag on your purchase, please add Thank You Books.
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4. Target—Buy 2 Get One Free on select books and movies, including The Great Belonging.
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5. Amazon—The paperback version is currently discounted by about $3 plus there’s a coupon. It’s available there for around $11.⁣
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I hope this book helps people have conversations about loneliness and belonging. ⁣I hope it normalizes loneliness. ⁣And I hope it helps readers notice ways they belong to themselves, others, and God.⁣
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I’d love for you to consider reading The Great Belonging if you’re interested in ways loneliness and belonging intersect with the Christian faith. With a mix of memoir, essay, and research, it’s a bit more creative nonfiction-y than most Christian nonfiction books. I don’t try to solve the problem of loneliness. I explore different angles of loneliness and belonging and invite readers into a posture of curiosity.⁣
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The Great Belonging also makes a great gift for anyone who might be experiencing loneliness right now. So that means you can buy copies for all of your friends and family! Just kidding. You can buy copies for just like three people.💚

Many thanks to all who’ve read The Great Belonging. Your feedback has blown me away. It’s an honor to know people are reading and connecting with the book.

*Image and words originally posted by Charlotte Donlon on Instagram.

Music Is a Dwelling Place

Does music help you feel less alone?

Below is the beginning of an essay for Curator Magazine about ways music helps me belong. It's an honor to have my work published by such a beautiful online publication. I think most people will connect with this piece that explores ways music decreases our isolation. See profile to read the full essay.⁣
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⁣Whenever I hear Peter Cetera belt out “Waiting for the break of day” in the song “25 or 6 to 4,” I’m carried back to the brick house on Hunting Creek Road in Montgomery, Alabama, where I lived as a child. I’m four years old. I’m on the rust-colored shag carpet and can smell the drywall and new paint in our den that had doubled in size from its recent renovation. I see my dad hanging his new Bose 901 speakers and setting up his sound system, including a Philips turntable. My Barbie dolls are not far from my reach, and I’d bet I ate a bowl of Frosted Flakes for breakfast. That song is my earliest music memory. ⁣⁣
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Music helps us inhabit time in ways that open us up to mystery, nuance, and new perspectives. Recent measurements of brain activity depict an experience most of us have had: being transported back in time by a song. Armed with those images, scientists explain that the medial prefrontal cortex, which is located right behind the eyes, collects music, memory, and emotion and braids them together as we listen and respond to songs from long ago. While we listen to old, familiar songs, our past combines with the present and we are in two places at the same time.⁣⁣
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*Read the rest of this essay adapted from a chapter from The Great Belonging at The Curator.

*Image and words originally posted by Charlotte Donlon on Instagram.

Why We Create

“Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” I love this quote by Carrie Fisher. This is why we create, right? ⁣
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This is one reason I wrote The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. My heart has been broken by loneliness many times throughout my life. And my heart has been healed through exploring ways I belong to myself, others, and God. Writing this book has helped me be curious about loneliness and see it in a new light. ⁣
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I heard the quote above on Brené Brown’s podcast episode with the authors of the book Burnout. ⁣They were talking about how creating is one way we can complete the stress cycle. If we don’t complete the cycle, we get stuck and bad things can happen. (Please listen to this episode and read this book!)⁣
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I know we don’t all have the time, resources, and energy to create in ways we prefer. And this can be affected by our season of life, our emotional capacity, and other circumstances we don’t necessarily have any control over. ⁣
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But there are easy and simple ways we can create. Write one sentence. Write one line of a poem. Draw a cloud. Take a photo. Make a loaf of sourdough. (I know all y’all are already doing this.)⁣
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And using our imagination in new ways works too. Listen to the episode for more details on that.⁣
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And listen to the episode (and read the book) to know why I’m officially giving my husband and kids very long hugs every day.⁣
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I’m working on Book #2 now. I’m writing about a few things that can cause heartbreak in our lives. And I’m writing about things that help us heal, that help us know we aren’t alone.

Our stories are full of heartbreak and healing, suffering and joy. ⁣
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May we give our attention to our stories and respond to our stories with care and creativity.⁣
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Cheers to turning our broken hearts into art.⁣
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*Image and words originally posted by Charlotte Donlon on Instagram.

When Food Helps Us Belong

This rosemary, white bean and chicken soup makes an appearance in the “Belonging to Ourselves” section of The Great Belonging. It’s in a chapter about recovering from a bipolar manic episode and reconnecting to a healthier version of myself.⁣
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Also. This book isn’t about mental illness but I write about my experiences with mental illness. Here’s what ⁣Sarah Sanderson said in her review at Mockingbird:
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“Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this book is Donlon’s willingness to welcome us into the far reaches of her own mind. Donlon has bipolar disorder; she has experienced addling manias and debilitating depressions. In The Great Belonging, Donlon relays these vacillations without hyperbole and without shame. What struck me most about these particular chapters is that, while they are vital to the book, The Great Belonging does not become, by their inclusion, a book about mental illness... It is a book about loneliness whose author happens to be quite open about her own mental illness. In treating her condition this way, Donlon gives us all a great gift: a vision of a world in which mental illnesses can be openly discussed, but do not have to totally define the people who live with them.”⁣
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My friend Michael Dechane asked for the recipe after he read The Great Belonging. You can get the recipe from this Substack post.
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If you’re curious about various angles of loneliness and ways we belong to ourselves, others, and God, you might like my first book, The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. You can buy it wherever you buy books or order here.

*Image and words originally posted by Charlotte Donlon on Instagram.