My kids are growing up 400 miles from their cousins. It's shown me that family can be whatever you want it to be.

"When my wife and I moved over 600 kilometers (nearly 400 miles) away from our family and friends in 2017, that choice put a lot of distance between our new life and the life we'd built up until that point. What I hadn't fully considered was what that distance would mean for our kids - now 9 and 11 - and their relationships with their cousins. My brother and his family"

"now live far away, and instead of being part of each other's daily lives, my kids and their cousins now see each other only a few times a year. Although we only lived near my brother during the first two years of my daughter's life, she and my brother's son, who is just one year older than she is, were joined at the hip. My brother also has a daughter"

My family moved over 600 kilometers from extended family in 2017, creating long separation between children and their only two cousins. The children, now 9 and 11, see their cousins only a few times a year—typically summer and fall—so relationships are episodic rather than daily. The loss of impromptu sleepovers and regular family dinners has shaped how the children understand family, belonging, and connection. Cousins were default playmates when the previous generation grew up in the 1990s; the children must instead build peer networks locally. The family maintains deliberate efforts to keep cousins connected while fostering strong friendships in their new community.

Read at Business Insider