In this post I want to address directly a tribe of people that don’t always know they are part of a tribe:  professional speakers. Yours is a lonely profession. Any given week you rise early, drive to the airport, catch a flight (multiple legs) to a remote location, and hole up in a hotel room that is often close to the elevator and far from the view. You have a few hours – or moments – to collect yourself, steam the wrinkles out of your speaking suit, and review your slides and it’s off to a sound check.

You may attend the reception for the International Association of Cheesemongers to whom you will be speaking the next day, or you may have an exercise routine and email to respond to, but either way you are soon back in your room, because you’ve got an early call and a speech to give the next morning.

When that next morning comes, you are the center of attention for an hour, and (if you’ve done your job right) everyone’s friend for a brief time afterward, and then it’s back to the hotel room, the airport, and home as soon as you can manage it.

You repeat the pattern (if all is going well) several times a week.

A study from 2012 surveyed thousands of people ranging in age from 25 to 64 to determine the ultimate keys to happiness or well-being. The finding:  we crave family and community – a circle of friends outside work. Other things do matter – health, wealth (to an extent), and social position – but the evidence is pretty clear that community tops everything else and by a significant margin.

Here’s the challenge. That lifestyle I just described above makes it singularly difficult to maintain the usual community and family ties. Life on the road as a speaker is both a personal and a relationship-challenged existence. The more successful you are the more challenged you inevitably become. You’re going to miss the birthdays, the games, and the social occasions that stick in the memories of the community. And you are going to be feeling loneliness the most keenly right after having been at the center of a little universe, on stage, all eyes on you, changing the world with a speech, to universal applause.

The whiplash, and the accompanying adrenaline cycle, of that existence will test even the most emotionally healthy community-minded, family oriented among you.

My father had been dying for a year of a lingering disease when my then-wife and I decided it was time to get what might be the last visit in to see him. We arrived on a Friday and visited with him on Saturday. He no longer knew where he was, and he didn’t recognize us as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Then, a minor miracle happened. He woke up, looked at my ex and I with a clarity I hadn’t seen for months, and said, “you’re so beautiful.” I was sure he knew who we were and where he was. Then he fell back asleep. We left soon after as it was the end of the day.

We got the call at 6:00 the following morning, Sunday. “Your father passed away in the early hours of this morning.”

I had a speech to give on Tuesday, and for a host of reasons that are not important now, I couldn’t get out of it. I debated whether or not to let the audience know of my loss, and decided against it, because it was not something that connected with the topic of the day. It simply didn’t seem fair to burden the audience with it.

It was my lowest moment as a speaker and the hardest speech I’ve ever had to give.

To my fellow speakers, I say this:  in addition to your existing family and communities, know that you are part of another community, the community of speakers. They uniquely understand the head-spinning combination of loneliness and the crowd that makes up your professional life. For the sake of your well-being and to be part of something larger than yourself, seek out that tribe, join a group of fellow speakers, and support each other as helpfully as you can. People need community, and you are no exception.

(Examples of various speaker communities can be found here, here, and here.)