Yahoo Lifestyle She Went Viral Talking About the 'Loneliness' of Being Single. Months Later, at 42, She Shares a Major Update (Exclusive)
Mia Chard talks to PEOPLE about how TikTok helped her find community and love
Mia Chard/TikTok; Courtesy Mia Chard
Mia Chard's TikTok (left); Mia Chard (right)TikTok user Mia Chard went viral talking about the loneliness she felt having been single her entire life
The then-41-year-old tells PEOPLE that making that video helped her find a community of people with similar experiences, which helped her get rid of her “shame”
Months later, Chard went viral again sharing the news that she was in her first relationship
In April 2024, TikTok user Mia Chard decided to get really vulnerable about a difficult part of her life.
In the video, she began, “I've been single my entire life.” She noted that she was just months away from turning 42 and, she said, “I've never had anybody love me or desire me or want to be with me.”
“I'm bringing this up because I'm lonely and sad and the world is hard and horrible,” she said, noting that while she loves family and friends, it’s not the same. “It's a different kind of loneliness if you've been single all of your life.”
“I’m always told sometimes as a single person that it's not easier on the other side,” Chard explained in the video. “So I guess I just wanted to say to people who get this feeling that you're not alone and I know that it's difficult, but I also know that there's a certain type of strength that has been developed.”
“It's okay to feel lonely and it's okay for it to feel hard and scary,” she said, "and know that I see you and I'm there with you.”
“Part of me had always felt like a deep shame about this lack of relationship experience, and I had felt a lot like I was the only one,” Chard tells PEOPLE exclusively about why she made the video. “I had seen maybe one other video from somebody talking about never having been in a relationship, and it struck a chord with me. And I decided, ‘You know what? Let's share.’ ”
“I never imagined the level of response I got,” she says. Chard’s April video was watched more than 11 million times and liked upwards of 1 million times. Seeing people respond she says, has been “really healing.”
“It was so lessening of the shame for me,” she explains. “Growing up in a small town, and being the only one who seemed to not have had this experience, automatically attached that to my character, like ‘This is a you problem, you need to fix and work on it,’ instead of, ‘This is just how life shakes out for people.’ ”
Courtesy Mia Chard
Mia Chard“There’s all these pockets of shame,” she adds. People assume that if you’ve never been in a relationship, “there’s something wrong with you.” Her original video — and the many more she’s made since — have helped her find other people in the same situation, and that connection has helped her “feel better.”
“But it's been interesting because with the love has come a lot of hate,” she explains. Some commenters echoed the same cruel tropes she’s heard before: “This is something wrong with you,” or, “No wonder people don’t want to date you.”
“My desire to make other people feel less alone, and for me to feel less alone, out shown that hate,” she explains. “I'm going to continue to talk about it, because there's health, there's healing, there's connection in this.” Posting has helped her find more “confidence” in herself, she adds.
This December, Chard had an update for her online community. “Life will surprise you,” she wrote over a video of her painting her nails. “Last December I wouldn’t have believed you if you said I’d be watching movies sitting next to my first boyfriend at 42. It’s never too late.” That video went viral too, with more than 3.4 million views.
Chard’s path to a relationship — with a partner she calls Max in her videos to protect his privacy — also started with TikTok. She had decided to try dating apps again for the first time in five years, but she and Max actually met after he slid into her DMs. She explains, “He had seen one of my videos where I went on a soda run, and he was like, ‘It looks like Utah, I’ll reach out.’ We met and had dinner, and, connected instantly.”
Chard thinks opening up about her singleness helped her find romance.
“That sense of connection lessened my shame,” she says. She finally allowed herself to try dating without feeling that every date was “life or death.” She thought, “I'm going to let myself just be uncomfortable with a process that I don't like to do, and I'm not going to attach so much meaning to it like I used to. This is just an experience," she shares.
Still, Chard says, “I don't think single people always have to be doing work on themselves. I think that's a message they get all the time.” But, she explains, “I think at the core, we all are wired for connection, just biologically. Emotionally, physically, sexually, I biologically am ingrained to want connection this way.” But romantic connection can be elevated above all other forms by the intersection of society, culture and religion (Chard grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), which she thinks contributes to the “loneliness epidemic.”
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Chard wants people like her who’ve never had a romantic relationship to know that they aren’t “less than” people who have. “I always say, ‘I’m not inexperienced at life, just this small component of it.’ It’s really crucial to just see that there's so many experiences you have in your life that translate into romantic relationships.”
Read the original article on People
