Kelly O'Rourke's Showdown with Loneliness

Kelly O'Rourke capitulated to her own dread of loneliness in a desolate island cabin. A constantly-on-the-go Los Angeles film producer, who didn't want a romantic involvement but couldn't reconcile her desperate need for others, O'Rourke gave up her L.A. apartment and moved with her two cats to a tiny island on Lake Kawaguesaga in Wisconsin's rugged north woods.

"I needed to depend on myself, to squash the need for anyone and instead rely on and be comfortable with only me," she later described her showdown with loneliness in a Cosmopolitan article. "Only then could I again become the woman I know myself to be--caring, giving, secure."

O'Rourke was successful. "Here on this resilient little island," she recorded her battle triumphantly, "I have weathered the storm, have made it though, kept company by a woman I'd traveled all these many miles to meet again. Myself."

Excerpted from Celebrating Time Alone: Stories of Splendid Solitude