Group suppers battle loneliness in Maine : NPR

Again in 2023, Karl Schatz and Margaret Hathaway, a husband and spouse crew, had just lately revealed two volumes of the Maine Group Cookbook after they heard that the U.S. surgeon basic, Vivek Murthy, had declared an epidemic of loneliness. Murthy wrote, “It’s related to a better danger of heart problems, dementia, stroke, melancholy, nervousness, and untimely dying.” Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or by no means exercising, he elaborated. Hathaway and Schatz’s books have been stuffed with recipes and tales from everywhere in the state of Maine and folks saved telling them that they beloved the books as a lot for the recipes as for the tales, Schatz instructed me.

This made Schatz and Hathaway marvel if, maybe, they could be uniquely positioned to supply an antidote to loneliness. Collectively they set about to discovered Group Plate. The aim of the group is to create potluck suppers in cities everywhere in the state of Maine the place folks come collectively who won’t know one another that nicely, even when they dwell across the nook from one another. Every particular person brings a dish to share and some determine they’ll inform tales.

So it was, on a current drizzly March day, that Hathaway and Schatz, together with their daughter, Charlotte, have been checking folks in for a Sunday story sharing supper in Norway, Maine.

All three greeted folks on the door, talking over one another as the primary friends arrived. Folks filter in, and a whole lot of casseroles arrive — it is March in Maine, in spite of everything — even an previous basic, inexperienced bean. Reed Mclean tells me that it is “straight from the can.” I ask, “Did you assist make it?” And he solutions, “I didn’t. Properly, I turned the oven on.”

The ambiance within the room is convivial and light-weight. Schatz appears round and says, “You recognize, I feel that folks see this as form of a present to the group, this chance for folks to return collectively.”

He tells me that, to be trustworthy, he and Hathaway did not know at first what precisely they have been offering. After which a lady at one in all their very first suppers really outlined it for them: “She had simply moved to Maine, she was a grandmother, she had moved right here to be nearer to her grandkids, and she or he got here and sat down on the desk throughout from me. I requested her what introduced her to the supper and she or he stated, ‘I got here as a result of I am lonely.’ It was the primary time I might ever heard somebody say that out loud.”

Only a few weeks in the past, the 2025 World Happiness Report issued a warning that acknowledged: “Social connections are critically essential for human well being, happiness, and prosperity.” The answer in line with the report? Folks want to sit down down and eat collectively. Hathaway agrees we’d like this now greater than ever. “And simply as our tradition turns into extra divisive, there are such a lot of points you by no means thought have been going to be scorching button points that all of the sudden are. Meals is mostly one thing folks can speak about with out it turning into contentious.”

As I mill round speaking to friends, a lady named June Howard is keen to inform me what she has delivered to share tonight. (Spoiler: It is a casserole.) She says, “It is received cubed-up hen. It is received carrots, celery, onions, cheese, apples, cranberries …”

Seated subsequent to her, Ruby Bryant, tells me she is glad to be right here tonight as a result of she wanted to get out. Two weeks in the past there was a horrible hearth on the home subsequent door to hers.

“We heard pounding on the door so we went downstairs in our pajamas and it was the policemen, by then they knocked the door down they usually stated, get your coats, and get out, your own home is melting.”

Although Bryant says she is gluten free and has introduced her personal dinner, she chats amiably with different friends as everybody waits for the buffet to get beneath approach.

Quickly, Schatz takes the mic and encourages folks to enter the buffet line, desk by desk. “We’re gonna begin with this desk over right here, ‘trigger you guys have been right here first so I do know meaning you are hungry.”

When everyone seems to be lastly seated and consuming, Schatz stands up once more, and takes the microphone. His mission is to get folks connecting and speaking. He suggests, “If you’d like, in case you’re sitting with an individual that you’ve dinner with each night time of the week, and also you determine tonight you need to have dinner with another person, you have got my permission to sit down with another person. We encourage you to do this, to perhaps make a brand new connection, as a result of that’s the reason we we’re right here tonight.”

And, in case anybody is frightened they have to stand up to inform a narrative he says, “So far as the story sharing goes, folks typically ask, ‘Do I’ve to share a narrative?’ And the reply is ‘no.’ You do not have to share a narrative. We additionally want listeners. Storytelling is a two-way avenue, you may’t have story-telling with out story listening.”

The room will get quiet, solely the clinking of silverware and chewing might be heard. Brendan Schauffler stands up and walks to the entrance of the room. He rubs his fingers collectively after which takes the mic. He begins to inform a narrative about his father’s loneliness, which led to his father’s eventual suicide when Schauffler was an adolescent. Wanting across the room, forks are down, faces nonetheless, everybody’s listening.

Brendan confesses, “I felt like my face forgot the form of a smile and that I’d be caught on this place eternally. I turned decided to by no means once more lose the chance to inform somebody I cared about how a lot they imply to me.

After two extra storytellers, the night begins to wind down and persons are pulling on coats and gathering their ladles and crock pots. Then, a person who requested that NPR not identify him to guard his household from additional ache, faucets Schauffler on the shoulder.

“I needed to thanks to your story. I, too, misplaced somebody very near me. I misplaced my 13-year-old son to suicide. And it’s extremely laborious for me, however I actually admire your braveness.”

The 2 males maintain one another. Schauffler says into the person’s ear, “I’m so sorry to your loss.” They begin to half, after which they lean in once more, and maintain on as soon as extra.

Moments of connection like this are unplanned and profound. The recipe is so easy: A Sunday night time, a potluck, some neighbors, and some tales. Group Plate is providing Maine an antidote to loneliness and disconnection, one supper at a time.

In case you or somebody you already know is in disaster, please name, textual content or chat with the Suicide and Disaster Lifeline at 988.