For those of you who live very far from immediate family, how do you cope with just not being there?

I don’t know ya just do, and try not to dwell on it.

I hate not being closer to my sons and grandchildren. We visit when we can and talk on the phone when they have time.

It’s a nine hour drive home for me from college.

I was REALLY homesick at first. But nowadays….I’m kind of comforted by the fact that when I come home, everything is basically the same as it was last time I was here. It doesn’t really feel like things are changing without me, even though I know they must be.

We talk a LOT online though, and that helps.

I think it’ll be harder when I graduate so the guaranteed twice annual visits aren’t necessarily going to be there anymore.

I lived far away during college. Didn’t faze me much. I was having a great time, lived being with my friends. My dad did have major heart bypass surgery while I was in school. I flew home for that. More for my mom and dad than for myself. I never thought he wouldn’t be ok. In retrospect I see how serious it was.

My entire adult life I have lived in a different state than my parents. I wasn’t married the first few years, but have been married the last 21. Several years my husband and I lived far from all of our relatives. I never was very bothered by it. Now that our parents are getting older we feel like we want to be nearer to them in case they need our help. Especially my husband’s parents. His mother is more isolated and his father is working too hard in our opinion. My parents are retired and busy every day doing their thing. Although, my parents have many more health issues than his.

I would have liked to have lived near my sister. That would have been really nice. We haven’t lived in the same state since I was 16 and she was 14. Well, there were a few months when I was 18, and a little over a month when I graduated college. Actually, I would have preferred to have my whole extended family living near me (it’s a very small family) but I never dwelled on it.

I think if I had children I would have really missed not having extended family around.

Uhm, maybe I’m a bit more independent, but I love being away. When I’m alone I can do whatever I want without someone trying to coerce me into doing something just because they’re family.

^ Nah I like being away too for similar reasons. But there are things about being away that are sad.

@ZEPHYRA You asked how to cope. I don’t feel like I need to cope, I would never use that word, because I’m not bothered by living away from family. However, my advice would be, you need to build friends and “family” where you live. Maybe you are just feeling lonely? I’m assuming you are not married.

I’m curious how old you are and why you moved away?

I’m also curious to know if you have a family that has a lot of events going on? Weddings, babies being born, even funerals and illness. Or, even if they tend to get together regularly on Sundays or some sort of tradition that you regularly are missing something the family is doing.

Are your parents guilt tripping you into feeling bad about moving away?

Did you grow up always near family? From the age of 9 my parents, my nuclear family, lived 5 hours from the nearest relative. So, it doesn’t seem odd to me to live in another state. Most people I grew up with and most people who live where I live now have family who live in other states. As opposed to my friends in Michigan and Tennessee where family rarely moves away. Especially my friends in MI. A few of them the parents, when they retired, started coming to Florida for the winter.