In my life technology has played such a key role in keeping my relationship with my family who are essentially across the world from me. Many of you might not know I am first generation American, my mom and dad are from South Africa and moved to America over 20 years ago. That is where all my family is and I have grown up apart from them my whole life. I am lucky enough to visit them usually every two years and spend a month with everyone there. Below was the last time I was able to see them and I got to spend my first Christmas with them! I will forever treasure those memories of being able to decorate a Christmas tree and being able to open presents together.
I grew up always speaking to my grandparents and family every weekend on the and I still continue that to this day. As well as for my birthday they call and sing happy birthday to me all together and celebrate with a chicken strips dinner to celebrate my favorite dish my family makes! I am also constantly on my phone texting them pictures of every day life and just hearing about their day. Even with the time difference I always know I can count on them to be there even if they are in a different continent.
I am so grateful that technology allows me to stay connected with my family and don’t know what life would be without having technology to help keep my connections with them!
Alexa, I love this! Especially with social-distancing, technology can help us from feeling too alone. I love video-calling my family and friends, it’s the next best thing to being with them.
Heartfelt and well written. For all the drawbacks of tech, it does provide a way for distant families to hang together.
I have son and daughter-in-law in London. Zoom has been essential. Ironically Covid has kept us from spending F2F time with our daughter and grandkids here in PDX. Can’t wait to get inoculated and start seeing them again.
Alexa, I did not know your family is from South Africa! That is so cool. I got to visit Cape Town and Johannesburg and want to go again. Technology does make it easier to connect with people all over the world. Through Zoom, I can connect with classmates in Portland, Hawaii, and a few other scattered places. With the COVID restrictions, I also Zoom chatted with family during the holidays too so we could stay in touch. A quick tech thing: I was sadly unable to view the Instagram posts on this post. Not sure why.
I loved being able to read how you are able to stay connected with your family that live so far away, especially now when travel is limited. I have definitely found that being able to keep in touch with people using technology has made such a huge difference in my ability to feel connected to my family and friends. I love that you included photos as well, how sweet to see!