I live away from my extended family and feel conflicted about it

[Nikia]

I've been thinking about this for a while and wonder if other people have this problem too.
I grew up in and around a micropolitain area in Ohio. This is the place where both my parents were born. My parents divorced when I was a toddler. Both sets of grandparents were very involved in my upbringing as my parents were busy being young adults in both selfish and unselfish ways. My father's parents still had a few children at home. The older ones visited frequently. My mothers brothers also visited frequently. Both families had official family events with their parents and sibling as well as larger family reunions with their cousins. I knew all my aunts, uncles, and cousins very well. most of them lived in the area, the furthest away, about 2 hours. My parents themselves didn't provide a very good nuclear family even when they remarried for a variety of reasons, some of which are painful. My extended family was my family.
I moved away to college in Wisconsin. I had to get away and make a life for myself, away from the pain of my parents. I live here now with my husband. We are all alone here as far as family. My grandfather died in June and I regret not being there as they all were the two weeks prior visiting him in the hospital. I went and knew that they were my family, but at the same time felt apart from them because I have been away while they see each other regularly. My husband is an only child and his extended family, which lived all over the U.S, was never as important, only his parents. I worry too that my future children will not have a close extended family either.
Despite this, I am not inclined to move back to Ohio. For one thing, the official unemployment rate is just over 10% in my home county. It is the place that I left behind too to forge my own life. I miss them though and want family. I just feel conflicted about this.

[cheezus]

1. broadband internet and a cheap usb video camera

reach out and touch someone

[Nikia]

2. Somehow this doesn't seem the same

They are all there for family holidays. I'd like to be, but my husband complains about the drive and his parents are demanding too. We do not have the money to fly down for family holdiays.
Most of them see each other a couple times per month if not per week for those who live closer.
Not all of them have internet either.

[Xipe Totec]

3. It's Not Easy Being The Nomad of the Family

I know how you feel. I had a large extended family; 64 first cousins and countless second cousins. Although my siblings also moved away from home, they have all come back to live within driving distance of our childhood home. Except me, clear on the other side of the continent. Because I felt so far away from the family I became interested in genealogy and now I'm the de facto historian for both my mother's and father's side of the family. One thing that I found interesting was that for the last seven generations on my father's side, no male descendant has EVER settled or raised a family in the town where they were born. My children are now the eight generation to be born in one place and live in another, going back 270 years! The other interesting thing is that the further away from home I have moved, the more family visitors I've had because now my extended family has an outpost where they can come to and know they are safe and welcome.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this:

First, if you go back far enough in your family, you're going to find out that one or more of your ancestors had to take the plunge and move to Ohio to raise a family, and whoever those ancestors might have been, your family owes them a debt of gratitude.

Second, if you expand your vision of what home is, you will realize that you haven't really moved that far away from home after all. Don't think about it as moving away, think of it as expanding your extended family's home range.


:bounce:

[Nikia]

6. I've tried to think of my ancestors that way

Even further back, most of them left their home countries to come to the colonies or early U.S. I still can see my family a few times per year without major hardship. They pretty much left their families for good to forge a new life. This was a great act of courage that has enabled me to be here today.
I suppose that you are right, I am extending the extended family to yet another area like my ancestors generations before.

[MrScorpio]

4. I'm missing my in-laws in the Netherlands

Maybe one day we'll just move over there so that we'll be closer to them.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. It has upsides and downsides

I lived in different states from my extended family for half my life.

I absolutely needed to do this from a psychological point of view.

But there is a downside: my nieces and nephews have been growing up without me, and so they are nearly strangers.

(Although, in all fairness, my relatives who HAVE stayed here don't see that much of one of the families anyway.)