Shore up your extended family support system

by Holi

Excellent article! The extended family has unfortunately deteriorated in recent decades. Many of us rely on a romantic partner to fulfill all our needs, but a complete extended family would provide a much more powerful support network. Each member of an extended family serves a special function and fulfills a different need.

If you are single and you don't have a healthy support network of extended family, loneliness is exponentially intensified. This loneliness can be especially bitter around the holidays. Volunteering is priceless, and our community friends might invite us to their holiday dinner, but without our own family, deep down we know that our presence is not vital to them.

It is crucial to build a support network of people who need you as much as you need them, and create a family of kindred souls. But that becomes increasingly difficult the older we get, because those around us in our community or church, might be our friends, but ultimately they have their own families.

There's a new service that matches adults platonically to create surrogate extended families. It matches both intergenerationally and peer to peer, so it's possible to create a complete extended family.

It's not just about helping yourself. There are people of all ages and walks of life you really need you to care about them.