2 . Every time we move to a new place, we’re faced with the challenge of making new friends. Connecting with a community is important to your sense of belonging, but it may take three to six months to finally make new friends, or even longer.     1    .

Get the word out

Tell your friends, family and co-workers that you’re moving and looking to meet new people. Make sure to communicate what kind of connections you’re looking for, like someone to show you around town. Use this time to do some research. Look up if your favourite coffee shop has branches in your new neighborhood.     2    . These groups, like volunteer organizations, can offer you a sense of familiarity.

Add more routine (惯例) to your day

Setting time aside for activities, communities or places you love can help you feel more at home. Do you go on a run every morning? Try running at the same park for a week. Or go back to that restaurant around the block at least once a month.     3     . By doing the same things, you’re seeing the same faces and you will become less shy to ask a question because you see them all the time.

Explore interest groups

    4     . Nowadays, you can find most of them online — for food, sports, or religion, just to name a few. You could also use your move as an opportunity to try things that you’ve been eager to try for years. That way, you feel connected to the city with the good memory of you excitedly exploring something new.

    5    

You don’t have to push yourself to make friends within weeks. Try to focus on being connected in the moment. When you’re new in town, you may feel shy or even frightened to share your true self. But you’ll find your people more quickly if you devote yourself into the things that you are interested. Laying that up is one way to really attract people with same interests, and soon you will find yourself connected.

My brother Gene and I are close in age but we didn’t get along when we were children. He never included me in his fun, especially when I was eight and he was nine. It was during that time that Gene and his friends built a tree house and wouldn’t let me help.

Afterwards, he hung a sign that read, “Girls Not Allowed.” I talked to Mom about his tree house and she ordered Gene to come home. “Gene, did you build a tree house at the end of the field?” she asked. “That’s right,” Gene said proudly and pointed to the distance.

Mom said seriously, “That tree is too close to the railroad tracks. You could fall off a branch right onto the barbed-wire (带刺铁丝网) fence. The fence was put there to keep kids away from the tracks.” “Mom, if you let me keep it, I promise that I’ll make everyone clear out of it when a train goes by.”

Mom said, “Okay, but stay on this side of the fence. No one goes near the tracks, and let Diana play in the tree house.”

That morning, Mom had promised if I picked a basket of wild raspberries (树莓), she would make fresh raspberry sauce for me. I really liked fresh, sweetened raspberry sauce on a bowl of ice cream. So Iran back to the house and grabbed a basket. The wild raspberry bushes near the house were nice enough, so I picked raspberries there for a while.

But these raspberries were small compared with the acre of raspberries in that forbidden territory around the railroad tracks. I dashed to the barbed-wire fence until I found where the wire sagged (向下凹). Carefully, I stepped over the fence and into the area next to the tracks.

There were green bushes with big raspberries. I began to fill my basket. When I heard the faint sound of a train in the distance, my heart began to race. “It’s okay,” I told myself. “Just find the low spot in the fence and climb over it.” But I couldn’t find the low spot.

I raced back and forth along the fence.

Using all his strength, Gene pushed me over the fence.

9 . Brandon will, 41, put his writing career on hold to become a full-time caregiver to his mom. He takes her on slow walks, trying to encourage her without getting frustrated. He arranges phone calls with her friends, cleans, cooks, and helps her dress and bathe. When she is thirsty, he gets her water.

His mom, Janice Will, 72, has Parkinson’s disease and can’t walk unaided across the room. “It’s very humbling,” Janice says. She feels sad to have taken him away from the life he was building in New York.

When she was diagnosed(诊断) with Parkinson’s in 2015, Brandon had just been offered a publishing job in New York and thought he could manage his mom’s care. He envisioned freelancing(从事自由职业) full-time while caring for Janice, but Parkinson’s is progressive and unpredictable. After Janice had a serious fall in 2018, he knew he had to return to the Midwest to live with her. Occasionally, he turned down jobs because he wasn’t sure he could meet a deadline or asked for extensions when his mom had an emergency. While people are generally understanding, he says, his explanation “still feel like my dog ate my homework” excuses.

He says he has no regrets about becoming his mom’s caregiver, but there are financial and personal consequences. “These are my prime earning years. I will always be working to catch up,” says Brandon.

Younger caregivers are frequently torn between work responsibilities and care. The Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers found that 23% of caregivers ages 18 to 44 had to quit their full-time jobs, while 57% had to reduce their hours and work part-time, according to a survey conducted in 2021.

Support groups have been invaluable. At one meeting, Brandon and Janice learned about a program called Dancing With Parkinson’s and now attend each Thursday. I love to dance, “Janice says. Brandon also joined an advocacy organization, Caring Across Generations, and he and his mom started writing together, posting essays on a website they call Our-Will-Power. Brandon says he has put aside, for now, aspirations to write young-adult novels and is working on a memoir about his initial hesitance to become a caregiver. He plans to call it “See If I Care.”