Wow, Open mike, you've really gone through a lot of serious changes in a pretty condensed time! That kind of intense transition can be very stressful. It sounds like you're smart about dealing with it--Creating families of your choosing rather than those you got by chance. In 12 steps we called them family of choice and family of chance. After my mom died and my first marriage ended (both within 3 months), Thanksgiving and Christmas were extremely rough for me. Now I've remarried, and I've built up traditions with friends and my husband. Tough times go away, rough patches give way to smoother stretches, and whoever was talking about you eventually stops. People who left don't necessarily come back, but other people come along. (Like that pop song says, "Saying hello, saying I love you, saying Goodbye" -- that's about the sequence, over & over.)

Kat, I agree that the rootlessness of our American life is a big piece of this. I don't have a strong geographic base of my own, except that my family has New England roots on both sides -- but not very currently. Halfbrother in Maine is heading west. I love my cousins in MA and RI, but I don't see them much. I've lived in Colorado for some 25 years now, because it's where my ex husband's family has been for several generations, and it's where my kids were born and grew up (although neither of them wants to live here now), and now there's the inertia factor -- hard to pull up stakes after so long, and it has such a great climate.

I'm working on a scheme to get over to France for a visit in the fall. And I'm trying to encourage my daughter to come back to the states, at least for now, since she can't find any work in Israel anyway. Thanks to all for comparing notes.