Friendship in Adulthood: Series Intro

By Eleanor Beeslaar, HRI Graduate Assistant

Friendship is an important part of life! Friends often make up a large portion of our support system, and in some cases, they may even be our chosen family. Maintaining healthy friendships and sharing deep connections with others can improve our overall well-being and life satisfaction. Friends can help us navigate life challenges and provide support during difficult times, while also being there to celebrate our successes and embrace the joys of life. They help us feel connected and reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation, especially during stressful life events. Friends can also increase our sense of belonging and purpose in life!

It’s clear that having strong and meaningful friendships is a key aspect of living a happy and healthy life. However, making friends as an adult can often be challenging. As an adult, there are many responsibilities, stressors, and life events that can become barriers to forming and maintaining strong friendships. For example, moving to a new place for a job or professional school can present a challenge to keeping up with friends from back home, as well as making new friends in an unfamiliar place. Additionally, priorities such as taking care of kids, establishing a career, and household tasks often take precedent over friendships during adulthood. Though life transitions and taking care of responsibilities are necessary, it’s also important to be intentional about building and maintaining healthy friendships during adulthood!

HRI is excited to help you establish and maintain healthy friendships as an adult by providing helpful information and tips about making friends as an adult, finding friends in a new place when going through life transitions, and learning to manage growing apart from friends. Stay tuned throughout the rest of this week to learn more!

Single Parenting: Self-Care

Single parenting takes a lot of time, energy, and strength, and it can be extremely draining. Sometimes you may feel like you are constantly racing to keep up with all of the responsibilities you are juggling. It is important to take time for yourself to recharge your batteries. When you engage in self-care and take care of your own needs, you can be the best version of yourself for your kids!

When engaging in self-care, try to approach it from a holistic perspective. Tune into the different areas that factor into your overall well-being. This may include your physical health, emotional and/or spiritual needs, relationships, and mental health. 

Self-care looks different for everyone. We encourage you to find what works best for you and schedule time to engage in your self-care activities every week!

Single Parenting: Seek Out Mentors

Your relationship with your child is important and can help them build trust, feel loved and cared for, and learn how to have healthy relationships with others. However, it’s also important to promote loving and trusting connections between your kids and other adult figures in their life. A great way to help your children build a sense of community and feel supported is to seek out other adult mentors who you trust. Involving other adult mentors in your child’s life can help them broaden their horizons, build social skills, and develop new points of view. 

You can seek out role models in a formal and/or informal capacity. Some parents may have friends and family members available to spend time with their kids. However, this isn’t always the case for some single parents. Other ways to seek out role models for your children include joining community organizations, such as a faith group, sports teams, or clubs. Teachers, coaches, and parents of other kids your children are friends with, are also potential people who can serve as mentors!

Single Parenting: Seek Support

Being a single parent is filled with many wonderful and joy-filled moments! Your kids are a source of laughter, fun, excitement, and love, and they can warm your heart everyday. Though single parenting is rich in special moments and happy memories, it can also be overwhelming and draining. 

Keeping up with the many demands that life and parenting throw at you can be challenging, and although you are strong and capable of doing things on your own, know that you don’t have to. A key part of thriving as a single parent is to surround yourself with a strong support system and to ask for help when you need it! 

Lean on the people in your life, who care about you and your kids, for support. Maybe you have family members or close friends who you can count on and trust with your kids. Other sources of support in your life may look more formal, such as a single parenting support group or a trusted babysitter. Regardless of what your support system looks like, when you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed, reach out to them for support. This may look like someone providing a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or help with babysitting/child care so you can take the night off. 

Asking for help from your support system can help you feel less overwhelmed during stressful and chaotic moments. We encourage you to reach out to the people you know you can count on when you find yourself in need of support!

4th Annual Healthy Relationships Week!

Join HRI in celebrating and promoting healthy relationships during the week of Valentine’s Day!  HRI will provide a series of online resources and tips, as well as face-to-face programming during the week of Valentine’s Day to help the Guilford County community strengthen their relationships.  Whether you are single or in a relationship, there is a resource for everyone!

To register for Healthy Relationships in Older Adulthood (Greensboro): click here.

To register for Healthy Relationships in Older Adulthood (High Point): click here.

To learn more about Family Fun Day on February 15th, click here.

Single Parenting: Regulating Your Emotions

Single parenting can be an intensely emotional experience, full of lots of ups and downs. It’s natural to feel a wide range of emotions any given day with the many responsibilities and life demands coming your way. Some moments will be full of joy, such as hearing your children’s laughter or getting an unexpected hug from your teen. Others, however, may be more challenging and filled with feelings of stress, anxiety, anger, and frustration. Know that it’s okay to feel this way. Experiencing tough emotions is a part of being human; no one is perfect, and we all have bad days. It’s how we choose to respond to these emotions that matters.

Practicing emotional self-regulation is a key element in keeping your cool as a single parent and modeling effective emotion regulation for your kids. Healthy emotion regulation starts with owning and accepting your emotions. When you allow yourself to tune into and experience your emotions, you create an opportunity to better understand what you are feeling and to respond in a positive and constructive way. This is especially important during moments when you feel angry or upset and feel like you are on the verge of losing your temper. Here are some quick and easy strategies to keep your cool and respond constructively when feeling angry or upset with your kids instead of reacting in a way that may escalate the situation even more: 1) take some deep breaths to help you calm down and 2) walk away from the situation to take some time to process what you are feeling before responding. For more tips to help you stay calm and regulate your emotions, visit our Split Seconds: How to quickly regain composure as a parent blog series.