University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have found a way to simultaneously mitigate three types of defects in parts produced using a prominent additive manufacturing technique called laser powder bed fusion.
Led by Lianyi Chen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison, the team discovered the mechanisms and identified the processing conditions that can lead to this significant reduction in defects. The researchers detailed their findings in a paper published on November 16, 2024, in the International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture.
“Previous research has normally focused on reducing one type of defect, but that would require the usage of other techniques to mitigate the remaining types of defects,” Chen says. “Based on the mechanisms we discovered, we developed an approach that can mitigate all the defects — pores, rough surfaces and large spatters — at once. In addition, our approach allows us to produce a part much faster without any quality compromises.”
Multiple industries, including aerospace, medical and energy, are increasingly interested in using additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to produce metal parts with complex shapes that are difficult or impossible to create using conventional methods.
But the big challenge is that metal parts created with additive manufacturing have defects — like pores, or “voids,” rough surfaces and large spatters — that significantly compromise the finished part’s reliability and durability. These quality problems prevent 3D-printed parts from being used for critical applications where failure is not an option.
By providing a path for simultaneously increasing part quality and manufacturing productivity, the UW-Madison team’s advance could lead to widespread industry adoption of laser powder bed fusion.
Laser powder bed fusion uses a high-energy laser beam to melt and fuse thin layers of metal powder, constructing a part layer by layer from the bottom up. In this research, the UW-Madison team used an innovative ring-shaped laser beam, provided by a leading laser company called nLight, instead of the usual Gaussian-shaped beam.
The ring-shaped laser beam played a key role in this breakthrough — as did critical “in-situ” experiments, says Jiandong Yuan, the lead author of the paper and a PhD student in Chen’s group.
To see how the material behaved within the part as it was printing, researchers went to the Advanced Photon Source, an ultra-bright, high-energy synchrotron X-ray user facility at Argonne National Laboratory. Combining high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, the researchers revealed the defect mitigation mechanisms, which involve phenomena that reduce instabilities in the laser powder bed fusion process.
The researchers also demonstrated that they could use the ring-shaped beam to drill deeper into the material without causing instabilities in the process. This enabled them to print thicker layers, increasing the manufacturing productivity. “Because we understood the underlying mechanisms, we could more quickly identify the right processing conditions to produce high-quality parts using the ring-shaped beam,” says Chen.
Lianyi Chen is the Kuo K. & Cindy F. Wang Associate Professor of mechanical engineering.
Collaborators from UW-Madison include Qilin Guo, Luis Escano, Ali Nabba, Minglei Qu, Junye Huang, Qingyuan Li, Allen Jonathan Román, and Professor Tim Osswald. Samuel Clark and Kamel Fezzaa from Argonne National Laboratory also collaborated on this project.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Spanish explorers may have brought the first peach pits to North America, but Indigenous communities helped the ubiquitous summer fruit really take root, according to a study led by a researcher at Penn State.
The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that Indigenous political and social networks and land use practices played key roles in the peach’s adoption and dispersal across the continent, according to the researchers.
“Peaches need a lot of care by people to be productive. They need to be planted in appropriate places with a lot of sunlight and the right soil drainage, and they need to be pruned,” said Jacob Holland-Lulewicz, first author and assistant professor of anthropology at Penn State. “For a long time, the narrative was that the Spanish introduced peaches and then peaches spread very quickly. The reality is way more complicated. How quickly peaches spread is very much a product of Indigenous networks and land management.”
The researchers analyzed historical documents that mentioned peaches, such as the travel writings of French missionary explorer Jacques Marquette and English merchant Jonathan Dickinson. They also employed radiocarbon dating — a method that measures the decay of radioactive carbon-14 atoms in organic material — to determine the approximate ages of peach pits and other organic samples, like carbonized tree wood, from 28 archaeological sites and two regional locales where archaeologists previously recovered preserved peach pits. The sites were located in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas.
The team found that peaches were likely widespread across Indigenous settlements in the interior southeast as early as the year 1620, roughly 100 years after the earliest Spanish expeditions in Florida and in Georgia’s Oconee Valley. The timing suggests that early Spanish settlements becoming important trade nodes within existing Indigenous networks created the necessary conditions for the spread of peaches, according to Holland-Lulewicz.
“Many narratives talk about the Spanish, or Europeans generally, arriving and then you see instantaneous changes to Indigenous histories and the spread of materials, but those initial interactions didn’t cause major changes,” he said. “It’s not until Spanish networks and Indigenous networks become entangled 100 years later that we have the necessary conditions for the spread of peaches.”
The team also identified what are possibly the earliest peaches in North America at a Muskogean farmstead in the Oconee Valley. In the 1990s, the late Penn State archaeologist James Hatch recovered peach pits from the bottom of post holes that once housed support structures for the farmstead’s house. The researchers radiocarbon dated charcoal, nuts and corn kernels from these post holes and found that occupation at the site began between 1520 and 1550 and ended between 1530 and 1570. This timing suggests that peaches had spread to the interior southeast possibly decades before the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, according to the researchers.
“Understanding the path that the introduction of species, such as peach trees, took through colonization and the role that Indigenous people and their long-term relationship with the environment played in shaping these histories demonstrates the importance of these events, people and processes to what becomes a broader American history,” said co-author Victor Thompson, Distinguished Research Professor of archaeology at the University of Georgia (UGA) and executive director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History. “Further, the fact that all of this work took place on museum specimens underscores the importance of maintaining these collections for future study.”
Indigenous peoples not only adopted the peach but selectively bred new varieties outnumbering the varieties found in Europe even at this early time, Holland-Lulewicz said.
“When Europeans started to move through and into the interior of the continent in the mid- to late 1600s, they noted that there were way more varieties of peaches being grown by Indigenous peoples than there were in Europe,” he said, explaining that the fruit had become an important aspect of Indigenous culture. “At this time, Europeans are noting really dense peach orchards around Indigenous towns, but some of these towns and people had never previously interacted with or even heard of Europeans. In fact, there are records of Indigenous peoples describing peaches as an Indigenous fruit.”
The fruit had become so integral to Indigenous history and culture that when the ancestors of the modern-day Muscogee (Creek) Nation were forcibly removed from Georgia and Alabama during the 1800s, they took peaches with them.
“There are Muscogee (Creek) peoples today who grow peaches as heritage crops,” Holland-Lulewicz said. “The act of growing and caring for those peaches is an important cultural practice. These were the first peaches introduced in the 1500s and 1600s that were then carried halfway across the continent and continue to be grown today.”
In addition to Holland-Lulewicz and Thompson, other collaborators include Amanda Roberts Thompson and Mark Williams at the UGA Laboratory of Archaeology, and Dario J. Chavez, University of Georgia; RaeLynn Butler, the Secretary of Culture and Humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and Turner Hunt, Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen; Jay Franklin, Logan Simpson Design; and John Worth, University of West Florida.
The UGA Laboratory of Archaeology and the Institute of Energy and the Environment at Penn State supported this work.
Solar and wind are quickly transforming the energy landscape — but if we are to realize the full potential of these intermittent, renewable energy sources, we’ll need safe, affordable batteries capable of storing it.
As part of an effort to overcome the long-term energy-storage challenge, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have invented a water-soluble chemical additive that improves the performance of a type of electrochemical storage called a bromide aqueous flow battery.
“Bromide-based aqueous flow batteries are a promising solution, but there are many messy electrochemical problems with them. That’s why there’s no real successful bromide-based products today,” says Patrick Sullivan who graduated from UW-Madison with a PhD in chemistry in 2023. “Yet, our one additive can solve so many different problems.”
Sullivan, PhD student Gyohun Choi, and Dawei Feng, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at UW-Madison, developed the additive. The research was published on October 23, 2024, by the journal Nature.
Currently, giant tractor-trailer-sized lithium-ion battery packs store energy for the grid — but with technical limitations. Lithium batteries have safety concerns due to the potential for fires and explosions and a complicated international supply chain.
Aqueous flow batteries, however, could make grid-scale storage safer and cheaper. In these batteries, positive and negative liquid electrolytes circulate over electrodes that are separated by a membrane. Since the batteries use ions dissolved in a liquid — water — they can be scalable, sustainable and safe.
The most commercially mature flow batteries are based on vanadium ions, which, like lithium, are expensive and hard to source. However, another version of these flow batteries relies on bromide, a cheap, widely available ion that performs similar to vanadium — at least on paper.
In practice, however, tiny bromide ions cause all sorts of problems in flow batteries. They can pass through the membrane that separates the electrodes, and that reduces the battery’s efficiency. Sometimes the ions precipitate out of the electrolyte and form a messy oil that “sinks” to the bottom of the solution. Occasionally, the ions also form toxic bromine gas. These issues hinder practical performance and reliability.
An additive called a complexing agent could help. Choi set out to find an additive that enhances bromide aqueous flow battery performance. The researchers used molecular design to engineer over 500 candidate organic molecules they call “soft-hard zwitterionic trappers.” They synthesized and tested 13 of these representative molecules as potential additives for the bromide batteries.
The resulting multi-functional additives solve the flow battery’s main problems. It encapsulates the bromide ions while allowing them to remain water-soluble, and since the resulting complex is now larger, they can’t pass through the membrane. The ions are also “phase-stable,” which means they don’t separate out of the water electrolyte or create toxic bromine gas.
Importantly, the additives dramatically improve the flow battery’s performance, increasing the efficiency and longevity of the chemical system. “Our devices with the additive functioned without decay for almost two months compared to ones without it, which typically fail within a day,” says Feng. “This is important because for green energy storage, you want to use it for 10 or 20 years.”
The team plans to continue refining the work. Choi will study the fundamental science behind additives for bromide and iodide flow batteries, while Sullivan, who is CEO of Flux XII — a renewable energy spinoff company he co-founded with Feng — will explore the commercial viability of the additive, which has already been successfully produced in industrial ton-scale reactions.
Dawei Feng is the Y. Austin Chang Assistant Professor in materials science and engineering. Other UW-Madison authors include Xiu-Liang Lv, Wenjie Li, Kwanpyung Lee, Haoyu Kong, Sam Gessler, and JR Schmidt.
New Curtin University-led research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient hot water activity on Mars, revealing the planet may have been habitable at some point in its past.
The study analysed a 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain from the famous Martian meteorite NWA7034, also known as Black Beauty, and found geochemical ‘fingerprints’ of water-rich fluids.
Study co-author Dr Aaron Cavosie from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said the discovery opened up new avenues for understanding ancient Martian hydrothermal systems associated with magmatism, as well as the planet’s past habitability.
“We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago,” Dr Cavosie said.
“Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation.”
“Through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy, the team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminium, yttrium and sodium. These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago, suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity.”
Dr Cavosie said the research showed that even though Mars’ crust endured massive meteorite impacts that caused major surface upheaval, water was present during the early Pre-Noachian period, prior to about 4.1 billion years ago.
“A 2022 Curtin study of the same zircon grain found it had been ‘shocked’ by a meteorite impact, marking it as the first and only known shocked zircon from Mars,” Dr Cavosie said.
“This new study takes us a step further in understanding early Mars, by way of identifying tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed, providing geochemical markers of water in the oldest known Martian crust.”
Lead author Dr Jack Gillespie from the University of Lausanne was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the time of the study, which was co-authored by researchers from Curtin’s Space Science and Technology Centre, the John de Laeter Centre and the University of Adelaide, with funding from the Australian Research Council, Curtin University, University of Adelaide and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The full study, titled ‘Zircon evidence for early hydrothermal activity on Mars’, will be published in Science Advances.
An archaeologist from the University of New Hampshire and her team have collected data which indicates the presence of a large-scale pre-Columbian fish-trapping facility. Discovered in the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary (CTWS), the largest inland wetland in Belize, the team dated the construction of these fisheries to the Late Archaic period (cal. 2000-1900 BCE), pre-dating Amazonian examples by a thousand years or more.
“The network of canals was designed to channel annual flood waters into source ponds for fish trapping and would have yielded enough fish to feed as many as 15,000 people year-round, conservatively,” said Eleanor Harrison-Buck, professor of anthropology and director of the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project. “The dates indicate that the fisheries were initially constructed by Late Archaic hunter-gatherer-fishers and continued to be used by their Formative Maya descendants (approximately 2000 BCE to 200 CE). For Mesoamerica in general, we tend to regard agricultural production as the engine of civilization, but this study tells us that it wasn’t just agriculture — it was also potential mass harvesting of aquatic species.”
Published in the journal Science Advances, the research used 26 radiocarbon dates from test excavation sites in the CTWS, which indicate that such landscape-scale wetland enhancements may have been an adaptive response to long-term climate disturbance recorded in Mesoamerica between 2200 and 1900 BCE.
“The early dates for the canals surprised us initially because we all assumed these massive constructions were built by the ancient Maya living in the nearby city centers,” said Harrison-Buck. “However, after running numerous radiocarbon dates, it became clear they were built much earlier.”
Sediment samples were collected along the walls of the excavation units and sequenced for specific elements, such as nitrogen and carbon, to look for environmental changes over time. The sediment showed a strong tropical forest dominance during that period and no evidence of crop cultivation, specifically maize. Along with a lack of any pollen from domesticated crops, there were not any signs of ditched and drained agricultural fields in the immediate area dating to that time. The multiproxy data gathered suggests the distinctive long linear zigzag channels served primarily as large-scale fish-trapping facilities.
“It seems likely that the canals allowed for annual fish harvests and social gatherings, which would have encouraged people to return to this area year after year and congregate for longer periods of time,” said Marieka Brouwer Burg, professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont and BREA co-director. “Such intensive investments in the landscape may have led ultimately to the development of the complex society characteristic of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, which subsequently occurred in this area by around 1200 BCE.”
“Wetlands have always been a critical ecosystem for humans across the globe,” said Samantha Krause, professor of geography and environmental studies at Texas State University. “Knowing how to manage wetland resources responsibly is essential for the continued resilience of these ecosystems both in the past and today. The Archaic hunter-gatherer-fishers knew how to protect their resources and use them in a way that could sustain these habitats, not exhaust them, which explains their long-lasting occupation in this area.”
With the support of the local community, the team plans to return to Crooked Tree to investigate a larger sample of these landscape-scale modifications that they have identified across a broad area of northern Belize, hoping to more fully understand the complexity of human-wetland interactions in the past.
Other co-authors include Mark Willis, department of archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia; Angelina Perrotti, Palynology & Environmental Archaeology Research Lab; Monona, Wisconsin; and Katie Bailey, department of anthropology, University of Vermont.
This research was funded by a grant from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago. Additional support was provided by a collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation. The Belize Institute of Archaeology provided an archaeological permit, granting permission to excavate in the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. The Crooked Tree Village Council welcomed the research team and permitted them to map and excavate in the wetlands around their community.
According to friends, Rachel Reeves is maintaining her sense of humour as she endures growing criticism of the decisions she has taken since becoming chancellor in July. She is certainly going to need it in the years ahead.
In barely four months, Reeves has managed to anger millions of pensioners, Britain’s farmers and some of the country’s biggest employers as she seeks to repair the public finances.
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It seems that voters have noticed. Polling by Savanta seen by HuffPost UK found that the chancellor’s approval ratings have plummeted since the election, while Labour’s lead over the Tories on who is most trusted to run the economy has fallen dramatically.
However, Reeves seems determined not to row back on any of the controversial decisions she has taken in the past four months.
She had hardly got her feet under her desk at the Treasury before she announced that the winter fuel payment, previously a universal benefit for every OAP in the country, would instead be means tested.
At a stroke, 10 million pensioners were told they would no longer receive it – a move which the Department for Work and Pensions admitted this week will push 100,000 of them into relative poverty.
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Reeves justified the decision by saying Labour had to make a start on filling a £22 billion black hole left by the last Tory government, but that did not shield her from the political backlash which followed.
Undeterred, she doubled down in the Budget last month, closing a loophole which saw farmers exempted from inheritance tax, while hiking the employers’ rate of National Insurance.
The unpopularity of those decisions was shown in the past week, with thousands of farmers protesting on Whitehall, while some of the UK’s biggest companies putting their names to a letter warning that the NI changes will cost jobs and push up prices.
But despite the criticism, there is no indication from the top of government that any U-turns are on the cards.
A Labour source: “Rachel promised at the election she would be an iron chancellor that would put the economy back on track – and that’s exactly what she is doing.
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“We have always said that there would be tough decisions to clean up the mess we inherited, including the £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances. If we duck those tough decisions we will be doing precisely what the Conservatives did: party first, country second.
“But Rachel is equally clear about the prize on offer: a Britain that is better off. That’s why the Budget was all about delivering for working people: fixing the NHS, rebuilding Britain and protecting people’s payslips from higher taxes.”
Farmers protest during a demonstration against inheritance tax changes on Tuesday.
Bloomberg via Bloomberg via Getty Images
Another senior insider told HuffPost UK: “Rachel is patient, shrewd and has confidence in herself and the people around her.
“People shouldn’t mistake her calmness and that rational approach for a lack of ambition for the government and the country, or an unwillingness to be bold.
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“She had a shaky start with the winter fuel payment announcement but she’s learned from it that presentation and follow-up is key, which is why the Budget was so well-managed at every stage.
“Undoubtedly there will be choppy waters ahead, but I couldn’t think of anyone better to be at the helm to steer the government and the country through.”
Nevertheless, there are some in government who despair at Reeves’ determination not to plot a difference course, regardless of the political headwinds she is facing.
They point out that previous chancellor, such as Gordon Brown, Nigel Lawson and Philip Hammond, all showed a willingness to change their minds when the situation demanded it.
Reeves’ decision to put Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, in charge of the “phase one” spending review outlining departmental budgets for the next 12 months, has also drawn criticism.
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HuffPost UK has been told that Jones’ “high-handed” manner in one-to-one meetings when outlining where the axe would need to fall angered virtually all of his cabinet colleagues.
“You will not find a single minister, with the possible exception of Wes [Streeting], who has a good word to say about him,” said one senior figure.
It is essential, government sources say, that Reeves herself is at the helm of the three-year spending review which is still to come, rather than her deputy.
Some in cabinet are also worried at the apparent lack of an overarching strategy for achieving the economic growth which is meant to be the government’s number one mission.
At a recent cabinet meeting where it was discussed, there was surprise that science innovation and technology secretary Peter Kyle, and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, were given star billing.
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“It seemed very thin,” said one minister. “There wasn’t a lot that seemed different from what the Tories have been doing for the last 10 years.”
Support for Reeves in government remains strong, however, and there is no doubt that she has the full confidence of her next door neighbour, the prime minister.
One ally said making so many unpopular decisions in her first few months in government was smart politically and economically.
“This is year one and people need to be reminded of that,” he said. “This is the first year of what will be a long parliament and it will undoubtedly be the most difficult year.
“They’re having to make difficult decisions and they’re determined that that is the right thing to do for the economy, but also politically it is the right strategy because you’ve got to do the difficult stuff now, right at the beginning, if you want to see an economic and political recovery in four years’ time.”
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Former Labour MP Michael Dugher, one of Reeves’ closest friends in politics, said: “She gets called the iron chancellor because she is seen as someone who is very tough and firm to deal with, and determined to get the public finances back in shape and create economic stability.
“But what she really needs is an iron skin because she is very much on the front line of the receiving end of a lot of the attacks on the government – whether it’s from Conservatives who still haven’t got over losing the election, or from the Left, who think Labour leaders as there to betray them.”
It is undoubtedly the case, however, that many more unpopular decisions will need to be taken by Reeves between now and the next election in four years’ time.
Having already burned through so much political capital, the pressure on her to bend will only increase if growth remains anaemic and the opinion polls do not improve.
How she responds will determine whether the iron chancellor tag is a deserved one or not.
Labour’s lead over the Tories on which party is best placed to run the economy has plummeted since the election, HuffPost UK can reveal.
Polling by Savanta shows that just 38% of the public now back Labour over the Conservatives, down from 50% in July.
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At the same time, the proportion of the public who prefer the Tories has gone up from 28% to 33%.
That means Labour’s lead has fallen from 22 points to five points in just four months.
The poll also found that Labour’s lead over the Tories on dealing with the cost of living has gone from 28 points to nine points over the same period, while the party’s lead on taxation has fallen from 16 points to just two points.
The findings are another blow for chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has come under fire over a series of controversial decisions she has taken since the election.
They include taking the winter fuel payment off 10 million pensioners, imposing inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million and hiking the rate of National Insurance paid by employers.
Reeves’ own personal approval ratings have also fallen from plus seven at the end of July to minus 18, the Savanta poll found.
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Chris Hopkins, the pollsters’ political research director, said Labour’s advantage on the economy had “all but faded away since the election”.
“The Conservatives haven’t made up that much ground on the economy, taxation and cost of living, but many voters no longer think that Labour are the most trusted on these issues,” he said.
“Reeves would no doubt argue that she is being forced to take difficult decisions because of the inheritance left to her by her Conservative predecessors. While the public do have sympathy for that point of view, I think it’s fair to say they were expecting more from Labour.”
The 20-something man approached my table, the corner of his mouth curving up. He looked away and rubbed his chin before making eye contact and telling me: “I just wanted you to know that if you’d come in sooner, my girlfriend and I would’ve invited you to join us.”
I smiled at him. It was nice of him to want to create community with me, although I was perfectly happy just as I was. But he wasn’t quite finished.
“I feel really bad for you,” he said. “You look so lonely.”
Those four words sat like rocks in my knotted stomach. I’ve heard them often throughout my life.
“Thank you. I’m not lonely. I’m fine,” I replied, a little too defensively.
I looked away. Jerk. Who walks up to someone to point out they look miserable? His words floated in the room like specks of dust catching the light, mocking me as he left hand in hand with his girlfriend.
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Maybe it’s just a checklist inherited from my parents’ “Silent Generation,” but I’ve found that society still measures worth, success and happiness in terms of wedding bands and strollers. I’ve lived much of my adult life believing in those metrics, so choosing to be single has been challenging. It doesn’t just mean dealing with the judgment from others — it also means hearing my inner demons repeat those verdicts: You’re less successful, damaged goods, a failure.
As I sat there alone, I told myself it was this guy’s issue, not mine. But the all-too-familiar whispers were getting louder as I looked around the restaurant, a spot my elderly B&B hosts had recommended, their wrinkled eyes twinkling: “The food is great. You’ll love how intimate it is.”
They were right. I loved the place as soon as I walked through its weathered wooden door. “Table for one,” I said, smiling at the hostess. She smiled back warmly as she welcomed me.
When I sat down, the young man who would eventually approach me was looking directly at me, so I smiled at him before perusing the wine list.
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This was 23 years ago. I’d recently moved to inland California, and had road-tripped to the coast to explore my new state and drive part of the famed Pacific Coast Highway. I’d been excited about this four-day jaunt, but now all I wanted to do was finish my Riesling and fettuccine Alfredo, pack my bags, and retreat to my small, secluded inland town.
I turned down homemade cannoli and walked, head down, back to the Victorian B&B. I stepped quietly past the den where my hosts sat focused on “Antiques Roadshow,” relieved they hadn’t noticed me come in. I took the stairs two at a time and slipped the key in the door to my room as a lump formed in my throat. Then I collapsed on my bed and cried. I’d let the whispers win.
Courtesy of Laura Lee Ellen Johnson
The author in 1964.
I can’t remember a time I didn’t feel different from everyone around me. I am the youngest of four kids, and the only girl. I bought into the Disney fairy tales early on and fully believed that a lifesaving kiss or a perfectly fitting shoe could lead a lonely princess away from evil to happily-ever-after. And yet by seventh grade, I was beginning to realise that this state of wholeness, supposedly only achieved with a mate, might not be right for me.
I recall hanging out one afternoon with my three best friends when a male radio reporter slowly articulated in a low voice: “One in four women will never marry.” A dramatic silence followed, to let the statistic sink in. We all gasped. While my friends discussed how terrifying it would be to lead a barren, lonely life without a husband and children, I secretly knew I would be the one in four.
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Where had that thought come from?
I have always been strong and fiercely independent. My mother used to joke that I came out of her womb telling the doctor to get his hands off me — “I’ll do it myself!” I don’t like to be told what to do, compromise is a concept I rarely entertain, and I’m horrible at asking for and accepting help.
When I was a high school junior, I dated a guy in college. He was my first real boyfriend, and being with an “older man” was a little exciting — until I started feeling suffocated. He wanted more and more of my precious time and attention. He was nice enough, but he always tried to take care of me.
I remember one night when he tried to “teach” me how to bowl, though I already knew how and was pretty good at it. My mom’s advice was: “You just need to play the game a bit more.” (Dating, not bowling.) “You should step back and let boys help you. Don’t come on so strong.” In other words, there is something wrong with a girl who’s too competitive and too autonomous. But how would I ever be truly happy if I wasn’t truly me?
Shortly after I turned 21, I traveled to Hawaii with my parents. We stopped in a gift shop, and as often happened, my mother found something she couldn’t live without. I was one aisle over when I heard her making her case to my dad about why they should buy whatever trinket she was holding. As I eavesdropped, hidden behind a display of swinging hula girl statues, I promised myself I would never allow myself to be in that position. At the time, I thought it was about negotiating with a man for something I wanted, but I’ve come to realize it was about not accepting any limits to what I wanted to have, do, say or be. It was about not being tied down or tethered to anyone.
I dated after college, but constantly found myself worrying that I was misleading men. I didn’t want the all-encompassing together-forever ideal that so many other women did. My relationships often fizzled when I resisted marriage and shared that I didn’t want children. I would welcome romance and intimacy — even today — if it didn’t require sharing space with someone 24/7. That’s been hard to find.
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Courtesy of Laura Lee Ellen Johnson
The author’s senior high school photo in 1982.
People would often come straight out and ask why I never married. In one case, after I was questioned, the entire group quieted, turned to me, and waited for an answer. What did they want to hear? “I’ve spent the last 20 years in prison because a guy in Long Beach said I looked lonely.” Or: “Since graduation, I’ve been cloistered with singing nuns in the Austrian Alps.” Why do people feel justified in asking for an explanation? I often fumbled and mumbled and shrank. I would allow people to make me feel bad about myself. Their questions created doubt, a second-guessing. They unleashed a long-programmed fear that society was right and my life was less fulfilling, less fully realized and less complete without a romantic partner.
People have suggested I am emotionally stunted for not being married — that I’ve missed out on the benefits of romantic partnerships, like negotiating, pooling resources and sharing essential decisions. But how does that make someone more mature? More socially acceptable, maybe. But whole, authentic, rounded, complete? I’m not convinced.
I have faced similar opportunities and challenges as everyone else, and done everything on my own. I’ve moved across the country. I’ve managed rent and home ownership, car payments, sewage backups and travel. I love jumping in my car, exploring towns, visiting museums and attending concerts — and no one ever throws a wrench in my plans. I don’t avoid doing things with others; I love spending time with my friends and family. But I don’t let not having a romantic partner stop me from enjoying my life to the fullest. Nothing stops me from following my heart.
I do get lonely — of course. There are times when I feel overwhelmed and wish I had someone to help me with my burdens, perhaps even take care of me. Usually these feelings surface when I am faced with a challenge, but they pass when I figure out how to solve my problem. I have always had the ability to see beyond obstacles, and when things go wrong, it’s almost never for long. And I’m not alone. I have people in my life I can turn to for love and support. When I remind myself of that, I get through the loneliness and get back on my feet. I also know that having a partner is not a guarantee that you won’t experience loneliness. Plenty of people in relationships feel lonely.
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I have finally learned to celebrate the peace, quiet and freedom to explore the world on my terms. I’d love to say this was a dramatic, once-and-for-all decision early in my life, but the truth is far more complex. It’s been a journey of constant, deliberate choices, each one a battle between the safety of conformity and the risk of missing out on who I was truly meant to be. And this journey has brought me to an important realisation: It’s not “me versus them.” It’s “me versus me.” It’s fighting the urge to let external judgments define me.
Courtesy of Laura Lee Ellen Johnson
The author kayaking in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2023.
In my 40s, I started to follow a more spiritual path and truly began to believe that we are all where we are meant to be. In my late 50s, I took a life-changing writing class focused on finding my authentic voice. I wrote more about my life and my experiences. I began to feel better about what I was adding to the world, and how I was helping others discover who they were through my work. I surrounded myself with people who were accepting and supportive of who I am.
Turning 60 was magical. I now accept that I am who I am, and I am OK with wanting what I want — or don’t want. I make conscious decisions not to internalise others’ judgments, and I forgive myself for having allowed their opinions to affect me in the past. Ultimately, it’s a personal belief system that has little to do with anyone else, and everything to do with self-acceptance in the face of all the noise.
When I walk with that certainty, I look for different reactions in people, and I no longer “invite” someone to point out my aloneness. Mindset makes a huge difference, and age, for me, has allowed for much less concern about what others think and do.
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Along the way, I have noticed we aren’t all that different. We travel, discover, learn, develop, love, connect and contribute — each adding our own unique twists.
On a recent solo road trip through Canada, I enjoyed two weeks of poutine, grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup, conversations with locals and other travellers, and people-watching. I never once felt out of place. Instead, I confidently announced “Table for one,” and embraced the me who dares to defy my former demons and society’s expectations.
Laura Lee Ellen Johnson is a writer and personal branding strategist based in Detroit. She writes for the career industry, as well as about living single, childfree and beyond society’s limits — at any age. She publishes a weekly Substack called “Fearless Authenticity,” and is completing her first historic fiction novel.
