Raina Cohen

Yeah, I totally understand that it is a complicated and sometimes difficult time.

I'll share one thing that had occurred that I'm doing with my friends this year.

So my husband is Dutch, and there is a very important holiday called Sinterklaas in the Netherlands.

And it involves essentially like a secret Santa, and you write poems that go with the gift.

And it's kind of supposed to be fun.

And he and I have wanted to do this for each other.

We've been together for a long time and have not often done it because with two people, it's like not that exciting.

We now live with six other people.

And it occurred to me that we could do what his family had done when he was a kid and celebrate this holiday that we're essentially taking what had been a family tradition and

and letting friends be part of that.

And I think that this is probably relevant for a number of things this time of year where there is this sort of more the merrier feeling and that it can be hard if you're on your own or maybe you just have like one other person that you don't want to have a full Thanksgiving meal or whatever the kind of holiday is.

So my suggestion would be, is there some kind of,

sort of tradition or thing that would feel really nice to do this time of year that maybe you have attached to family, but could be something that you invite other people into.

I think the idea of, I think, Friendsgiving, which has become very popular in the last several years in the U.S., is one version of that.

And it can be a really, like, lovely way for people to experience Thanksgiving, but among people who are not

necessarily their blood relatives.

So that's one suggestion that I have for having people to not feel like they are stuck with whatever the given family situation is and that they can make their own version of the things that they enjoy or might enjoy about this time of year.

Well, thank you for your thoughtful questions and to everybody who submitted questions too.

It's exciting to me that people care about this topic so much and want to learn more about it.

Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives.