Blog

The U.S. Surgeon General declared it an epidemic. The research is unambiguous. And for adults with intellectual disabilities, the isolation runs deeper and lasts longer than almost anyone is paying attention to.

---

I have spent a significant part of my professional life studying the conditions under which organizations thrive — and the conditions under which they quietly die from the inside. What I have learned is that the most overlooked variable is almost always connection. Not strategy. Not funding. Not talent. Connection.

It turns out the same is true for human beings.

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the loneliness epidemic in America. The findings were stark. People without adequate social connection face significantly elevated risk of stroke, dementia, and heart disease. Their odds of premature death are 60 percent higher. Loneliness, the report concluded, is not a soft problem. It is a public health emergency.

That emergency hits hardest in the places we aren’t looking.

Adults with intellectual disabilities experience loneliness at rates that most researchers describe as epidemic within an epidemic. The barriers are structural, not personal. After age 22, the scaffolding of school disappears. Sensory sensitivities make typical social environments difficult. Communication differences make casual connection harder. And the broader culture, which has made real progress on employment inclusion, has been far slower to invest in social inclusion.

“The research points to what we know all too well. We need social bonds to thrive. Without this sense of community, the quality of life suffers.”

Kitty and I did not build Wonderfully Made because we read a Surgeon General’s report. We built it because Kitty watched families she loved sitting with this weight alone, and because I watched what happens to human beings — and organizations — when connection is absent long enough. The research didn’t give us permission. But it confirms what families have been saying for decades without anyone writing it down officially.

Loneliness is not a personality trait. It is not an inevitable outcome of intellectual disability. It is the consequence of a world that hasn’t built enough rooms.

What Wonderfully Made does, at its core, is build rooms. A Tuesday. A kitchen. A basketball court where Coach John runs drills with his daughter Lele. A Zumba session that Ian dances through like it was made for him. A table where Troy tells a joke and everyone laughs and the morning feels lighter. A kitchen where Teon bags 300 cookies with focus and pride and nobody has to supervise him.

These are not therapeutic interventions. They are not outcomes measured in clinical assessments. They are Tuesday mornings. They are what happens when you build a room with intention and then get out of the way and let people be human beings together.

Robin Dunbar, the anthropologist, spent decades studying human connection. His research found that most of us can sustain meaningful relationships with about 150 people — and that our true inner circle, the people who know us deeply, is typically five. Five people. That is what we are building for every Wonder Maker who walks through our doors. Not a program. A Bethany — a place of rest and real belonging.

The Surgeon General can name the crisis. We are grateful someone finally did. But the solution was never going to come from a report. It was always going to come from people deciding to build a table and invite someone to sit down.

That is what we are doing. And it turns out that when you build the table, something remarkable happens — the people you thought you were serving end up serving you right back, and the room fills up with laughter, and the cookies come out of the oven, and for a Tuesday morning, nobody is lonely at all.

Be the solution to the loneliness epidemic

Volunteer at Wonderfully Made and experience firsthand what belonging looks like when it is actually working. Visit wonderfullymadecommunity.org/get-involved/volunteer to sign up for a Tuesday.