Someone once said cousins are usually the first friends we have as children and end up being our forever friends in life. 

That truly resonates with me. 

Growing up, I spent many school holidays at my aunts’, which helped me build strong bonds, and several of these relationships have helped me manage to maintain into adulthood.

 Cousins are the only ones who can truly understand our “crazy families”. 

Of course, there have been ups and downs – but no matter how far apart we drift, we always find our way back to each other without much effort. 

I am certain it is because of that childhood connection that the familiarity and all the history and memories we share.

 As I grow older, I have this longing to be around and connect with blood relatives. 

It’s important to me at this age to know my people and build – even just cordial – relationships with the people on my family tree. 

We may not have chosen each other or have grown up together or around one another, but we share the same blood.

 I would love to form deeper connections with the distant ones too, but it can sometimes feel like you’re playing family with virtual strangers. 

When you have hardly spent any time together as children, it’s much harder to connect with family as adults. 

It makes things feel awkward or forced, and no healthy relationship should feel that way. 

Bonding with family when you’re older is like making new friends; you have to get to know the person and try to establish early boundaries. 

It can take time to build trust or open up. 

Even with friends, we are sometimes unsure how we will be received; with these virtual strangers, it is even more uncertain.

I understand now why it was important for some of our parents to send us away for visits to aunts and uncles – for the bonds to form with your kin at that tender age. 

Moreover, we have children to consider, and when we let our children form relationships with relatives, we do them a favour.

 It is one of the best gifts one can give one’s offspring – people who stand with them. 

It is a forever friendship and a support system that’s tied by blood, because we won’t always be around. 

They may have the fortune of finding a really good friend, but blood truly is thicker than water. 

I notice that most times, we, as adults, are quick to involve children in our politics, especially drama with family members outside our own homes.

 This should never happen; children have nothing to do with adult issues and should be left out of fights and arguments. 

They can’t even comprehend it, yet we just rob them of relationships with family for selfish reasons. 

We can’t stop them from visiting relatives, especially the ones they have formed great connections with, just because we don’t, for reasons that have nothing to do with them. 

If we raise our children in isolation, they will live in isolation. 

Being alone, although sometimes necessary, can get really lonely when that’s all you know.

*Paula Christoph’s column concentrates on positive and inspirational write-ups every second Friday in the New Era newspaper.