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This is my life, and has always been my life. My dad took his family 2000 miles away from any family for a job. I left home at 17 for college and never expected to return, not even for a summer term. I had to find someone to marry or a job and neither were possible by returning to my struggling rust belt city. Now that I have had both (job and spouse) and subsequently, retirement and children, we have moved even further from family for husband’s job training. It took just four years of familial isolation and a pandemic to illuminate my need for a village—or maybe even just a mother. Without one, I can’t. I can’t have more children. I can’t date my husband. I can’t even exercise or eat healthy, because my family is...just me, and on occasion the husband/father who eats with us on occasion between training. It’s sad to me that my parents will likely pass away without my children having had any real knowledge of them, because my children also need to eat, and at the moment bellies full trumps nearly everything else in life for me. It’s also sad to me that I’m paying for a therapist to tell me to pay a cleaner so that I will like my children and keep my husband. Maybe a minute of village relief would cure all.

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I hear you. Even though I have family nearby, we're all existing as nuclear units, so it's hard for my wife and I to even get out for a walk. My hope is my kids have a stronger village than I've had myself.

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