I pivoted from a relatively successful career in big cities to return to the region where I’m from, Central Appalachia, which until recently was completely gutted and abandoned. My husband and I came back to the region during a different America, in 2011, to learn a lot of do it yourself skills and start a farm.
I came back to do something about where I was from, and until 2024, a lot of of us, under the radar, had shifted the narrative for that region about what was possible – – the pinnacles for us being federal investment in training people for renewable energy, and a grant that I helped achieve for regional local foods logistics to support over 40 farms. Both the kinds and sizes of federal investment in people that signaled actual sector build.
During this time, I even wrote a book, reflecting on how the coalfields of Appalachia got here, extracted and abandoned, and traced the mix of private capital, state capital, and federal capital that props up and creates any economic sector in the United States. Working together, a lot of us attempted to mimic that with a different vision for our local future. Both of our federal infrastructure grants around these new visions were killed in the last 19 months.
And suddenly our region is back on the radar to be controlled by data centers, rare earth mineral projects, and sites for large scale industrial projects that people and other places wouldn’t tolerate. But that’s the macro.
Add to this, the flaming medical system shit shows that were the deaths of my elderly parents, one poor, and one middle class, which brought home a different kind of abandonment. A friend of mine and I discussed how, in the end, even being middle class or rich (her family, not mine) in the US is not enough to escape an absolutely undignified death. You needed to be wealthy. You had to be wealthy enough to set it up all yourself, and to your point, to do it yourself.
I roll this into the delusions of my neighbors around libertarian fantasies of radical family and self-care, and their choice to birth at home and, I sit with the knowledge that the healthcare system that was supposed to be a good regional system, failed me in the birth of our son, whom we only found out 10 years later that through the tremendous bungling of his birth, has a kind of brain based blindness. The medical professionals here in the US we paid out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) to help us figure out why suddenly this very bright child was failing at school, took our money and comfortably misdiagnosed or put him through treatments that were not only expensive, but absolutely ineffective and unnecessary.
I’m still here in the US working. I’m the one to wrap up a lot of the activities on our farm, which we luckily downsized tremendously early last year in the face of what we anticipated to be the tremendous economic downturn that we're in right now and the continued severe escalation of prices to farm. Last summer my son and husband moved for now to Germany. There, while not perfect, within a half hour at an ophthalmologist who sat and listened to us, asked the questions herself, did the examination herself rather than outsource it to an assistant– she came back with what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis of our child’s issue. I had several doctors in Germany and the UK hear the birth story and immediately suggest the potential problem. Had the potential for litigation kept the doctors in the US from suggesting it?
Several years back, my husband and I used to do speaking engagements around sustainable agriculture, and we’d open it with: neither Calvary nor the cavalry is coming to save you.
All of this above is not even counting what we saw near us with Hurricane Helene. The region mobilized first by DIY, because most literally, no one else could get in to save people….
I have a PhD; I’m versed in the language of existential and unfathomable risk.
But most of all, your article brought home for me that my recent self admonishment that I should have known more about birthing my child, that I should’ve taken a full how to help others have a baby class and learned how to birth a baby, that the REAL mistake I made was relying on anyone actually to help us to show up. That I was the problem that I just had not done it myself enough.
I have friends that stockpile thinking they’re going to survive with buckets of beans and cabinets of guns whatever it is that the next proposed apocalypse is supposed to be.
I know that we only survive in community and through communities of care.
There are a lot of rural Black folks where I still live (my family is mostly white), and they have rightly retreated to their farms and their families and their communities for that care because they know no one‘s coming to truly help them and by no one, I mean the people in power.
My late father used to explain to me how older people that could no longer work, and that had no means of paying for medical assistance, all of this prior to Social Security and Medicare, would just sit down on the front porch in a rocking chair and, within short time, die. He reminded me how Social Security was called the communist scourge then. He remembers people just sitting down on the front porch and soon being dead.
I have younger friends and activist friends who deeply participate in mutual aid. It’s interesting that James Talarico leaned on the love thy neighbor message recently. Unprovoked, never with any political message on a T-shirt or on our vehicle, I’ve had people put their hands on me and lash out at me where I live (all and only since 2016). The farm that we bought is now surrounded by white Christian nationalists and replacement theory Libertarians.
I don’t feel particularly abandoned, but I believe that is in part because I got a lot of therapeutic help in my 30’s with the early loss of my father. I spent much of my 40’s and 50’s in supportive groups: group therapy, yoga studios, UU church with a deep understanding that I need people. I rely a lot on groups of people especially when times are rough, including my family. They sometimes disappoint me, but I seem to hold faith in people when I gather with them. Thanks to everyone who I know. Thanks Priya for Art of Gathering.
On a city-wide level(I live in DC) lots of bike lanes have been built, but there’s an abandonment of responsibility to follow any roadway rules. It is now the norm to ride a motorized or electric bike the wrong way on a one way bike lane. There’s no enforcement of rules of the road. I don’t have answers here, but I wonder if at some point now in my 60’s I will give up commuting by bike because it’s too dangerous. That will really be a loss for me and I’m not sure how I would feel.
Abandonment of enforcement of rules, abandonment of collective responsibility, all within the context of a madman doing what he wants with our city without any enforcement of rules or sense of collective responsibility. That’s where I’m at. Thanks Anand. I look forward to reading your book.
I walked into my last appointment of the day yesterday and the 14 month old dog in front me growled.
Dad laughed and went back to looking at his phone.
I tried to talk to him about Fear Anxiety and Stress is his dog.
He could not have cared less. His dog just... doesn't like new people he told me.
This is a 14 month old dog, with not a lick of training that the dad just doesn't care if we have to muzzle and pin to do anything with (we didn't cause I won't) that laughs when his dog escalated
My husband is also a vet; he would, I'm sure, echo your sentiments.
Many years ago, a Pit bit off the tip of one of his fingers. The owner asked (with no remorse) if they were going to finish the office call. The staff had to explain that "no," the doctor had to go to the hospital.
I read your Times essay; it was eloquent and evocative. Many thoughts and emotions arose as I read it and the premise of the article demands deeper consideration. However, what comes to mind as I reflect, is that a sense of abandonment is a core aspect of being human. It has been with us from the beginning and haunts our lives. As a species we have tried many ways to assuage the reality of isolation and many have been effective. But they are always illusory or temporary. In the world we live in today, structures of safety and assurance have frayed and too often we reach for the closest explanation or solution. I feel abandoned in multiple ways through loss, lack of true community, feelings of being irrelevant, and more. The only antidote I have found is to have faith in my own integrity and to continuously build resourcefulness, this along with finding others to engage and connect with in meaningful ways. We have created a complicated and in many ways heartless society; I don’t know how or if it is even possible to undo the choices we have made as humans. I do believe that self reflection and self evaluation can make a difference.
My wife and I are in Ireland today after dropping our son off at an Irish university here. He chose to study for his undergraduate degree in Ireland because he has special learning needs, and the Irish university offered the best supports. Also, we will save on tuition and give him an international educational experience that was out of our reach at a college in the states. We are very happy for our son and his chosen path. Nevertheless, I feel utterly abandoned by the institutions of higher education in America. The tuition arms race is out of control, and the opportunities for graduates are rapidly dwindling. What are we doing to our children? We need to invest in America and Americans to make it possible for our kids to stay here and have healthy prosperous lives.
Honestly, I generally feel abandoned when I have to call customer service in relation to any type of insurance issue. When I'm told something ridiculous I push back or just laugh. The Book of Excuses keeps getting thicker and thicker. It always feels like a not so gentle reminder in yes, we have all the power and guess what, we just don't care.
Our son gifted his dad, for birthday #92, with a copy of your new book. Reading the NYT article reminded me of two incidents 10 plus years ago, one when our car had a window broken by a gunshot while in a repair shop parking area, and two when a friend's boyfriend was deliberately hit by a truck while walking home from a grocery store. The police were asked to investigate both incidents but barely put any effort out to do that and the perpetrators were never identified or charged. As former newspaper reporters, my husband and I would have followed up much more thoroughly for a story. Our local police are apparently not trained in investigative skills or not given enough time to investigate crimes.
I feel orphaned rather than otherwise abandoned. As if all those charged with protecting and guiding us went down on the same overloaded ferry owned and operated by callous profiteers, and drowned while we sat helpless on shore.
I can’t help but see a connection between individualism and consumerism, and the equal and opposite of loneliness and abandonment. We have constructed a society of large private homes and luxurious personal automobiles on one hand, and crumbling institutions on the other.
I find that when people are talking about “personal responsibility” what they’re really doing is asserting their freedom from having to care about anybody else. Which seems great until you feel the earth giving way under your own feet.
It’s less that I feel personally abandoned and more that I see so many things being neglected.
Anand, I so appreciate how your essay prompted introspection (at least that’s what it did for me).
My husband was dying of cancer through our Covid (years) of quarantine- and everything got even harder— and the cruelty of this regime and its followers & the dysfunction grew even more intense.
And my husband & I would start and finish the days & our sense of groundlessness with: “Well, we’re on our own.”
But in the midst of all that bleakness, somebody always came through: the MSK nurses who gave him his blood transfusions, (in the quarantined capsule at the outpatient lab) - the masked hospice nurses who trekked from their homes to care for my husband in his final days-
Feeling abandoned feels so primal & really messes w the head - but thanks to the folks back then who helped my husband- I’m trying to remember to slow down that terrifying feeling & say “wait- that’s not entirely true. Someone comes through.”
I recently turned 80 and felt as if ascending a mountain and looking down on my life. I’ve had a full and interesting life- three marriages, three grand children - and I fear their latter’s chances of reaching octogenarian status is now much less than I have faced.
Thank you for your work. I don't feel abandoned but then again, I never imagined anyone coming to the rescue. Maybe I had no trust in the heroes that did show up...Instead I recognize the impossible challenge of getting people involved in modest neighborhood work or local campaigns. It looks as though outrage is the gasoline for political engagement and none of the other emotions will move people to meet with neighbors, pick up trash, or think about their local councilor races.
I am finding my way in the midst of wreckage, collecting emails from neighbors for the next meeting, hoping to persuade people we are worthy of love. We are even worthy of discussion! There are very few real demons. I have pre-ordered your book to learn why Mr. Penny couldn't relax that chokehold on Mr. Neely. He had control in that moment, but remained afraid. Just there, if only we could act out of fellow humanity, we could change the world.
I've lived a life of abandonment. From being born in between two significant generations (Boomers and Gen X) and never quite fitting into either, to being raised in a divorced household by a single-parent but enrolled in every religious private school my mother could find full of the traditional archetype families that were the American ideal. I was the raisin walking amongst the cookie cutter types, and they showed me my oddness on a regular basis. I'm a divorced, single woman on my own for almost 30 years. Did I mention I've had a career in education and wrote a book titled "Orphaned: The Abandonment of America's Public School Teacher"? I tried to get it published, but...well I think you get the drift. I've been incompatible with American life my whole life.
But I've also not been abandoned. For every rough situation I found myself in where I was alone struggling with systems that don't care and quite frankly don't work as designed, to friends that suddenly turned away, and a work life that savaged my soul, not to mention my health, I've always landed on my feet because I never abandoned myself. Now it did mean that I had to step into situations that were scary, such as moving 5 states away to start a new job. But, wow, have I had so many varying experiences and met so many different people because of it!
That's the paradox of America isn't it? A place, a country, a culture that will absolutely chew up and spit someone out. At the same time, a country that offers a plethora of opportunity if one is willing to take a risk and reinvent. My life has been made richer and more diverse because I've started over, and started over again. And although sometimes the jaded side of me comes out with the urge to just crawl into a hole, I would say I'm more open to diverse ideas, opinions, and people. I understand how one's surroundings shape views and often people just can't break out of it because the pressures inside those same surroundings depend on everyone keeping with the script.
So my answer to the question, "do you feel abandoned?" is yes. Yes by almost all of the ins and outs that make up American life, except one. Myself. I will never abandon myself.
Dear Anand, I don't feel abandoned personally, but we live in a society, in an economic and political system that is built on extraction and exploitation, so the situation is structural rather than individual. What would it mean to put care, broadly conceived, at the center of how we organize our lives? This isn't an original idea--there is a whole literature on this now--and it is something to strive for: a society in which we can care for our families, friends, communities and our planet. Emma Dowling's The Care Crisis is one place to start to think about these issues.
I pivoted from a relatively successful career in big cities to return to the region where I’m from, Central Appalachia, which until recently was completely gutted and abandoned. My husband and I came back to the region during a different America, in 2011, to learn a lot of do it yourself skills and start a farm.
I came back to do something about where I was from, and until 2024, a lot of of us, under the radar, had shifted the narrative for that region about what was possible – – the pinnacles for us being federal investment in training people for renewable energy, and a grant that I helped achieve for regional local foods logistics to support over 40 farms. Both the kinds and sizes of federal investment in people that signaled actual sector build.
During this time, I even wrote a book, reflecting on how the coalfields of Appalachia got here, extracted and abandoned, and traced the mix of private capital, state capital, and federal capital that props up and creates any economic sector in the United States. Working together, a lot of us attempted to mimic that with a different vision for our local future. Both of our federal infrastructure grants around these new visions were killed in the last 19 months.
And suddenly our region is back on the radar to be controlled by data centers, rare earth mineral projects, and sites for large scale industrial projects that people and other places wouldn’t tolerate. But that’s the macro.
Add to this, the flaming medical system shit shows that were the deaths of my elderly parents, one poor, and one middle class, which brought home a different kind of abandonment. A friend of mine and I discussed how, in the end, even being middle class or rich (her family, not mine) in the US is not enough to escape an absolutely undignified death. You needed to be wealthy. You had to be wealthy enough to set it up all yourself, and to your point, to do it yourself.
I roll this into the delusions of my neighbors around libertarian fantasies of radical family and self-care, and their choice to birth at home and, I sit with the knowledge that the healthcare system that was supposed to be a good regional system, failed me in the birth of our son, whom we only found out 10 years later that through the tremendous bungling of his birth, has a kind of brain based blindness. The medical professionals here in the US we paid out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) to help us figure out why suddenly this very bright child was failing at school, took our money and comfortably misdiagnosed or put him through treatments that were not only expensive, but absolutely ineffective and unnecessary.
I’m still here in the US working. I’m the one to wrap up a lot of the activities on our farm, which we luckily downsized tremendously early last year in the face of what we anticipated to be the tremendous economic downturn that we're in right now and the continued severe escalation of prices to farm. Last summer my son and husband moved for now to Germany. There, while not perfect, within a half hour at an ophthalmologist who sat and listened to us, asked the questions herself, did the examination herself rather than outsource it to an assistant– she came back with what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis of our child’s issue. I had several doctors in Germany and the UK hear the birth story and immediately suggest the potential problem. Had the potential for litigation kept the doctors in the US from suggesting it?
Several years back, my husband and I used to do speaking engagements around sustainable agriculture, and we’d open it with: neither Calvary nor the cavalry is coming to save you.
All of this above is not even counting what we saw near us with Hurricane Helene. The region mobilized first by DIY, because most literally, no one else could get in to save people….
I have a PhD; I’m versed in the language of existential and unfathomable risk.
But most of all, your article brought home for me that my recent self admonishment that I should have known more about birthing my child, that I should’ve taken a full how to help others have a baby class and learned how to birth a baby, that the REAL mistake I made was relying on anyone actually to help us to show up. That I was the problem that I just had not done it myself enough.
I have friends that stockpile thinking they’re going to survive with buckets of beans and cabinets of guns whatever it is that the next proposed apocalypse is supposed to be.
I know that we only survive in community and through communities of care.
There are a lot of rural Black folks where I still live (my family is mostly white), and they have rightly retreated to their farms and their families and their communities for that care because they know no one‘s coming to truly help them and by no one, I mean the people in power.
My late father used to explain to me how older people that could no longer work, and that had no means of paying for medical assistance, all of this prior to Social Security and Medicare, would just sit down on the front porch in a rocking chair and, within short time, die. He reminded me how Social Security was called the communist scourge then. He remembers people just sitting down on the front porch and soon being dead.
I have younger friends and activist friends who deeply participate in mutual aid. It’s interesting that James Talarico leaned on the love thy neighbor message recently. Unprovoked, never with any political message on a T-shirt or on our vehicle, I’ve had people put their hands on me and lash out at me where I live (all and only since 2016). The farm that we bought is now surrounded by white Christian nationalists and replacement theory Libertarians.
Kumbaya.
I don’t feel particularly abandoned, but I believe that is in part because I got a lot of therapeutic help in my 30’s with the early loss of my father. I spent much of my 40’s and 50’s in supportive groups: group therapy, yoga studios, UU church with a deep understanding that I need people. I rely a lot on groups of people especially when times are rough, including my family. They sometimes disappoint me, but I seem to hold faith in people when I gather with them. Thanks to everyone who I know. Thanks Priya for Art of Gathering.
On a city-wide level(I live in DC) lots of bike lanes have been built, but there’s an abandonment of responsibility to follow any roadway rules. It is now the norm to ride a motorized or electric bike the wrong way on a one way bike lane. There’s no enforcement of rules of the road. I don’t have answers here, but I wonder if at some point now in my 60’s I will give up commuting by bike because it’s too dangerous. That will really be a loss for me and I’m not sure how I would feel.
Abandonment of enforcement of rules, abandonment of collective responsibility, all within the context of a madman doing what he wants with our city without any enforcement of rules or sense of collective responsibility. That’s where I’m at. Thanks Anand. I look forward to reading your book.
I walked into my last appointment of the day yesterday and the 14 month old dog in front me growled.
Dad laughed and went back to looking at his phone.
I tried to talk to him about Fear Anxiety and Stress is his dog.
He could not have cared less. His dog just... doesn't like new people he told me.
This is a 14 month old dog, with not a lick of training that the dad just doesn't care if we have to muzzle and pin to do anything with (we didn't cause I won't) that laughs when his dog escalated
That's abandonment to me
My husband is also a vet; he would, I'm sure, echo your sentiments.
Many years ago, a Pit bit off the tip of one of his fingers. The owner asked (with no remorse) if they were going to finish the office call. The staff had to explain that "no," the doctor had to go to the hospital.
I read your Times essay; it was eloquent and evocative. Many thoughts and emotions arose as I read it and the premise of the article demands deeper consideration. However, what comes to mind as I reflect, is that a sense of abandonment is a core aspect of being human. It has been with us from the beginning and haunts our lives. As a species we have tried many ways to assuage the reality of isolation and many have been effective. But they are always illusory or temporary. In the world we live in today, structures of safety and assurance have frayed and too often we reach for the closest explanation or solution. I feel abandoned in multiple ways through loss, lack of true community, feelings of being irrelevant, and more. The only antidote I have found is to have faith in my own integrity and to continuously build resourcefulness, this along with finding others to engage and connect with in meaningful ways. We have created a complicated and in many ways heartless society; I don’t know how or if it is even possible to undo the choices we have made as humans. I do believe that self reflection and self evaluation can make a difference.
I feel abandoned by the promise that the meek shall inherit the earth.
My wife and I are in Ireland today after dropping our son off at an Irish university here. He chose to study for his undergraduate degree in Ireland because he has special learning needs, and the Irish university offered the best supports. Also, we will save on tuition and give him an international educational experience that was out of our reach at a college in the states. We are very happy for our son and his chosen path. Nevertheless, I feel utterly abandoned by the institutions of higher education in America. The tuition arms race is out of control, and the opportunities for graduates are rapidly dwindling. What are we doing to our children? We need to invest in America and Americans to make it possible for our kids to stay here and have healthy prosperous lives.
Honestly, I generally feel abandoned when I have to call customer service in relation to any type of insurance issue. When I'm told something ridiculous I push back or just laugh. The Book of Excuses keeps getting thicker and thicker. It always feels like a not so gentle reminder in yes, we have all the power and guess what, we just don't care.
I do not feel as abandoned as I feel lied to and misled about many things.
Our son gifted his dad, for birthday #92, with a copy of your new book. Reading the NYT article reminded me of two incidents 10 plus years ago, one when our car had a window broken by a gunshot while in a repair shop parking area, and two when a friend's boyfriend was deliberately hit by a truck while walking home from a grocery store. The police were asked to investigate both incidents but barely put any effort out to do that and the perpetrators were never identified or charged. As former newspaper reporters, my husband and I would have followed up much more thoroughly for a story. Our local police are apparently not trained in investigative skills or not given enough time to investigate crimes.
I feel orphaned rather than otherwise abandoned. As if all those charged with protecting and guiding us went down on the same overloaded ferry owned and operated by callous profiteers, and drowned while we sat helpless on shore.
I have so many thoughts, but i’ll just say this.
I can’t help but see a connection between individualism and consumerism, and the equal and opposite of loneliness and abandonment. We have constructed a society of large private homes and luxurious personal automobiles on one hand, and crumbling institutions on the other.
I find that when people are talking about “personal responsibility” what they’re really doing is asserting their freedom from having to care about anybody else. Which seems great until you feel the earth giving way under your own feet.
It’s less that I feel personally abandoned and more that I see so many things being neglected.
Anand, I so appreciate how your essay prompted introspection (at least that’s what it did for me).
My husband was dying of cancer through our Covid (years) of quarantine- and everything got even harder— and the cruelty of this regime and its followers & the dysfunction grew even more intense.
And my husband & I would start and finish the days & our sense of groundlessness with: “Well, we’re on our own.”
But in the midst of all that bleakness, somebody always came through: the MSK nurses who gave him his blood transfusions, (in the quarantined capsule at the outpatient lab) - the masked hospice nurses who trekked from their homes to care for my husband in his final days-
Feeling abandoned feels so primal & really messes w the head - but thanks to the folks back then who helped my husband- I’m trying to remember to slow down that terrifying feeling & say “wait- that’s not entirely true. Someone comes through.”
I recently turned 80 and felt as if ascending a mountain and looking down on my life. I’ve had a full and interesting life- three marriages, three grand children - and I fear their latter’s chances of reaching octogenarian status is now much less than I have faced.
Thank you for your work. I don't feel abandoned but then again, I never imagined anyone coming to the rescue. Maybe I had no trust in the heroes that did show up...Instead I recognize the impossible challenge of getting people involved in modest neighborhood work or local campaigns. It looks as though outrage is the gasoline for political engagement and none of the other emotions will move people to meet with neighbors, pick up trash, or think about their local councilor races.
I am finding my way in the midst of wreckage, collecting emails from neighbors for the next meeting, hoping to persuade people we are worthy of love. We are even worthy of discussion! There are very few real demons. I have pre-ordered your book to learn why Mr. Penny couldn't relax that chokehold on Mr. Neely. He had control in that moment, but remained afraid. Just there, if only we could act out of fellow humanity, we could change the world.
I've lived a life of abandonment. From being born in between two significant generations (Boomers and Gen X) and never quite fitting into either, to being raised in a divorced household by a single-parent but enrolled in every religious private school my mother could find full of the traditional archetype families that were the American ideal. I was the raisin walking amongst the cookie cutter types, and they showed me my oddness on a regular basis. I'm a divorced, single woman on my own for almost 30 years. Did I mention I've had a career in education and wrote a book titled "Orphaned: The Abandonment of America's Public School Teacher"? I tried to get it published, but...well I think you get the drift. I've been incompatible with American life my whole life.
But I've also not been abandoned. For every rough situation I found myself in where I was alone struggling with systems that don't care and quite frankly don't work as designed, to friends that suddenly turned away, and a work life that savaged my soul, not to mention my health, I've always landed on my feet because I never abandoned myself. Now it did mean that I had to step into situations that were scary, such as moving 5 states away to start a new job. But, wow, have I had so many varying experiences and met so many different people because of it!
That's the paradox of America isn't it? A place, a country, a culture that will absolutely chew up and spit someone out. At the same time, a country that offers a plethora of opportunity if one is willing to take a risk and reinvent. My life has been made richer and more diverse because I've started over, and started over again. And although sometimes the jaded side of me comes out with the urge to just crawl into a hole, I would say I'm more open to diverse ideas, opinions, and people. I understand how one's surroundings shape views and often people just can't break out of it because the pressures inside those same surroundings depend on everyone keeping with the script.
So my answer to the question, "do you feel abandoned?" is yes. Yes by almost all of the ins and outs that make up American life, except one. Myself. I will never abandon myself.
Dear Anand, I don't feel abandoned personally, but we live in a society, in an economic and political system that is built on extraction and exploitation, so the situation is structural rather than individual. What would it mean to put care, broadly conceived, at the center of how we organize our lives? This isn't an original idea--there is a whole literature on this now--and it is something to strive for: a society in which we can care for our families, friends, communities and our planet. Emma Dowling's The Care Crisis is one place to start to think about these issues.