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• At 41 years old, I moved in with my 88-year-old grandmother.
• My personal circumstances made it relatively easy for me to slip into the role of caregiver.
• My grandma and I enjoy watching TV together, but caregiving isn’t easy.

A little more than two years ago, I woke up in my childhood bedroom for the first time in more than three decades.

I wasn’t home just for a visit. In fact, I wasn’t even back with my parents. At 41 years old, I moved in with my 88-year-old grandmother to take care of her. (I call her Mamaw as any good Texan kid would.)

All along, my family knew that one day the Mamaw would no longer be able to live alone. Since my grandmother refused to give up her own home, I offered to move in.

It made the most sense for me to move in with Mamaw

When I was a kid, Mamaw, Mom, and I lived together in this house. Mamaw became like a secondary parent to me. Over the course of four years, she taught me the joys of old musicals and playing card games that were way too advanced for 7-year-olds.

Now that I’m in my 40s, I’m living with Mamaw again because it makes the most sense. The logistics were a lot easier than my mother uprooting her life and taking on the primary caregiver role.

As someone who is single with no children and no mortgage, it made the most sense for me to move in. Not having to worry about selling a home or uprooting a family to move in with Mamaw made the process relatively seamless — aside from moving all the books.

Thankfully, I’m not doing this alone. My family has concocted its own version of the sandwich generation. A recent layoff made my working situation a little more complicated right as Mamaw needed some extra care. Now, my mom comes over most weekdays to take care of home health visits, appointments, and other caregiving tasks while I work and job hunt.

Living with my grandmother isn’t easy, but there are bright moments

I’m not trying to be a martyr here. Moving in with Mamaw wasn’t some selfless sacrifice for which I expect a pat on the back. I genuinely enjoy her company, and we get along great when she isn’t refusing to eat lunch or using my cat napping in her lap as an excuse not to do her physical therapy.

I’ve introduced her to the wholesomeness that is “The Great British Bake Off “and the brutality of playoff hockey, and heck, she was even strangely fascinated by watching my marathon sessions of “Animal Crossing.”

Don’t get me wrong, though: it’s not always easy. There are doctors’ appointments, home healthcare sessions — all while trying to juggle work meetings, and the ever-present battle to keep her eating and drinking enough.

I’m enjoying the last few years I have left with her

Now at 90 years old, it’s hard to ignore the changes I’ve seen in her health in just these two short years.

Circumstances have put us together time and time again over the years. She’s been there for me more times than I can count, and I’m only too happy that I’m in the situation to be able to return that favor.

Plus, who else is going to watch “Jeopardy” with me every weeknight?

• New social, professional networking, and dating startups are coming onto the scene.
• VCs and angel investors are funding some of these promising startups.
• Here are the pitch decks 13 startups used while raising rounds from pre-seed to Series A.

A new generation of consumer social startups is emerging.

From platforms focused on getting people to meet IRL to dating apps taking on Tinder or Hinge, startups are disrupting the digital social scene.

Founders of these startups are tackling problems like loneliness, dating app fatigue, and general dissatisfaction with the current social media incumbents.

Some founders come from Big Tech backgrounds, like the Instagram-heavy team behind photo-sharing app Retro, or the ex-Google employees building the social-mapping app PamPam. Gen Z founders are also throwing their hats in the ring, like Isabella Epstein’s IRL-focused app Kndrd, or Tiffany “TZ” Zhong’s Noplace app.

Investors are taking notice.

For instance, the IRL-social app 222, which matches strangers over dinner or activities with a personality quiz, raised a $2.5 million seed round from venture capital firms like 1517 Fund, General Catalyst, and Best Nights VC in 2024.

“We’re entering this new wave of social where people are trying to revert back to what people really use these platforms for to begin with — which is connection,” Maitree Mervana Parekh, a principal at Acrew Capital, told Business Insider in 2024.

Meet 19 startups in social networking, dating, and AI that investors have their eyes on

Some venture capital funds — such as French firm Intuition VC or gaming-focused firm Patron — have made tackling loneliness and relationships part of their investment theses.

But it’s not just friendship and dating that are ripe for disruption.

Startups like Khosla Ventures-backed Gigi, Yale-student-founded Series, Boardy, Filament, and Goodword have raised capital for AI tools to help people network better or maintain professional relationships.

“When people think about loneliness, they think about friends and family,” Goodword CEO Caroline Dell recently told Business Insider. “But we spend most of our waking hours at work as professionals.”

Meet the founders of 11 startups competing with dating app giants like Tinder

Other startups, like Diem and Spill, have opened up investment rounds to include users themselves using the platform Wefunder.

It’s not yet clear how many of these investments will pan out. Some startups are pre-revenue, while others are experimenting with monetization methods (such as freemium models).

“Founders have to be honest with themselves,” said Marlon Nichols, a founding partner at Mac Venture Capital. “Some of them aren’t really venture-scale or venture-type investments. We’re looking for the next big thing, the next category leader.”

Meet 12 VCs and investors eyeing new social startups

BI spoke with several social-media and dating app founders about how they are raising capital, including the pitch decks they used to raise millions of dollars.

Read the pitch decks that helped 13 social-networking and dating startups raise millions of dollars:

Note: Pitch decks are sorted by investment stage and size of round.

Series A

• Posh, an event-based social network based in New York City: $22 million Series A (12 pages)
• Spoon Radio, a social-audio startup: $17 million (15 pages)
• Clyx, an app to make plans with friends and meet new people: $14 million (22 pages)
• Pie, an IRL social startup founded by Bonobos’ Andy Dunn: $11.5 million (31 pages)
• Meet5, an IRL social app for Gen X and baby boomers: about $9 million (11 pages)
• Howbout, a social-calendar app to help people make plans with friends: $8 million (12 pages)

Seed

• Hangout, a social music platform: $8.2 million seed (26 pages)
• Goodword, an AI copilot that wants to help people make deeper professional connections: $4 million seed (11 pages)
• First Round’s On Me, a dating app that prioritizes making plans over swiping and DMs: $3 million (16 pages)
• Seam Social, a Web3-inspired social network that lets users make mini-apps: $2.5 million (10 pages)
• Cerca, a dating app focused on matching people with mutual friends: $1.6 million (10 pages)

Pre-Seed

• Series, an AI professional network for college students: $3.1 million pre-seed (10 pages)

Other

• Rodeo, a social shopping platform, shared the pitch deck it used to get accepted into an A16z startup accelerator (11 pages)

Read about more social networking and dating startups raising millions:

• Airbuds, a social music app, told Business Insider in November that it has raised $10.2 million to date — including a recent check from Alexis Ohanian’s VC fund.
• Sweatpals, a fitness and wellness social platform, raised $12 million in seed funding.
• Sitch, an AI matchmaking dating app, announced in April that it had raised $2 million in pre-seed funding.
• Amata, another AI matchmaking dating startup, recently launched in the US and disclosed that it raised $6 million in 2023.
• Gigi, an AI social network for making professional connections, announced in September that it raised $3 million from Khosla Ventures.
• Corner, a social mapping app for Gen Z, disclosed in September that it has raised $3.75 million to date.

• Hundreds of flights have been canceled on Sunday after a snowstorm hit the Midwest.
• Chicago’s O’Hare airport has seen the most cancellations and delays.
• About 1,500 flights were canceled in Chicago on Saturday when the storm first hit.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed across the United States on Sunday after a winter storm battered the Midwest over the weekend.

About 240 flights into or out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport were canceled as of 11 a.m. ET on Sunday. Another seven were canceled at Midway Airport, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Hundreds of others were delayed in the Chicago area, one of the country’s busiest flight hubs.

Another 1,500 flights were canceled on Saturday as heavy snow and strong winds swept across the Chicago region, according to FlightAware data.

The winter storm — and the subsequent flight cancellations and delays — come as Americans travel following the Thanksgiving holiday, typically some of the busiest travel days of the year.

The Transportation Security Administration had predicted that Sunday would be one of the busiest days in its history.

The agency said it would likely screen over 17.8 million people from November 25 to December 2, including more than 3 million on Sunday alone.

In an update, the National Weather Service said a period of “accumulating snow” was expected from Monday afternoon into Monday night in the Chicago region.

The agency said this “may produce hazardous travel conditions for the Monday afternoon commute and potentially lingering impacts for the Tuesday morning commute.”

Another winter storm could hit New England and the Mid-Atlantic in the coming days, the Weather Prediction Center added.

• I’m a mom of four, and as my kids grow older, I’ve had to adapt my interests to bond with them.
• Things like allowing them to take over the car radio to play the music they are into connect us.
• I get to study new things with them and expand my own knowledge.

As my kids have grown up, I’ve tried to come to terms with the slow loss of them to the world.

While this is the natural order of parenting, it’s still hard to accept. They’ve moved forward, and I’ve mourned the loss of our time together. Evenings once spent watching shows or talking have become rare. They spend more time with friends than with me, and I’ve wondered how to remain a relevant part of their lives.

One of the best ways I’ve managed to maintain my connection with my kids as they’ve moved into middle school, high school, and college is by adjusting my own interests.

I care about staying connected with my 4 kids

Whether it’s allowing my high school daughter to take over the car radio or television or letting my middle school son pick an activity, I’ve had to be flexible and broaden my thinking. It’s opened me up to new music and genres. My youngest daughter’s obsession with Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan has become my own. I’ve learned every song, and we’ve started talking about going to her first concert at some point this year. Moments spent singing lyrics we’ve learned together on the morning rides to school have become a treasure.

I’m also well-versed in the vocabulary and trends of younger generations. I understand all the lingo from “huz” to “mid.” I’ve even managed to work it into my own conversations. While I don’t care about being cool, I do care about remaining connected to the four humans I brought into the world. Understanding how they talk and think helps. It also lets them know how invested I am in what’s important and relevant to them.

I get to learn along with them

Adopting their interests has let me discover hobbies — both new and old. When they were younger, I’d let many personal interests slip, even giving up reading for fun. There was no time or space for my own interests. Now, I’m glad to have that back. It’s a perk of their growing independence.

My other kids have also developed some really cool hobbies and interests. My 12-year-old son has developed an interest in space. With hopes of becoming an astronomer one day, we have borrowed our library’s telescope. I am learning to use it with him and also how to track down stars and planets. This past summer, it was an amazing way for us to bond and stay connected. We took pictures of the moon through the telescope and shared interesting articles about exoplanets and other interesting space lore.

My eldest daughter, who just turned 19, has cultivated her growing interest in true crime for most of her teen years. It may be due in part to having watched every episode of “Criminal Minds” together as she made her way through high school. True crime books lined her bookshelf. Now she is studying criminal justice in her second year of college with the hope of transferring to Arizona State to study forensic psychology.

This was once a dream of mine. While I never pursued it, I am now studying it alongside her, watching documentaries, reading, and exploring crimes she is learning about. I’ve also begun listening to true crime podcasts, which was always difficult for me as a visual learner with less-than-stellar auditory skills. This has become a favorite part of getting back into working out.

My renewed interest in working out has also helped me forge a deep connection with my youngest daughter, a freshman in high school. She has taken an interest in tennis and continues to remain interested in competitive cheerleading and fitness. Our shared interest has led to a new project. We are working on building a gym in the basement. We spend time searching our local Buy Nothing Facebook group to find things to add. We recently found a stationary bike and hope to find a treadmill. Working out in our home gym has an added benefit; it will help us make it through the long, cold New England winter.

Whether it’s working out at home, marveling at the night sky, or watching a true crime documentary, learning alongside my kids has been an unforgettable experience. It has allowed me to connect and grow with them, even as they grow up and away. My world has expanded just as their world has. I’m so grateful to be able to share their hobbies and interests. Instead of losing them, I’ve connected with them in a deeper and more meaningful way.

• In my culture, children are expected to greet everyone in the room with a hug and a kiss.
• My daughter didn’t like to and often screamed when relatives tried to hug and kiss her.
• I teach my kid that she has choices and can say no whenever she feels uncomfortable.

My young daughter wasn’t yet 1 years old the first time she shook her head and stretched her hands out to push away a hug from relatives. Everyone laughed it off, assuming she would grow out of it.

What they didn’t realize was that, even at that age, I was teaching her that she always has a choice — something I didn’t have growing up.

Every family gathering began the same way when I was a kid. I would open my grandparents’ front door, and the smell of tamales, turkey, rice, and the best of our Mexican-American world would welcome me at the doorstep. I loved the laughs, food, and family, but before I could settle in, I had to brace myself for the greeting ritual.

With my shoulders tight and my steps tiptoeing along the living room, I scanned the faces of new visitors who had made a pit stop at our feast. A polite smile and a wave were considered rude, but it felt strange to show affection to people I had never met.

If I weren’t eager to make my rounds, I would get a nudge on my back with an emphatic, urgent command from all the adults in unison: “¡Saluda!” That made the next step clear: hug and kiss every adult in the room as a gesture of respect.

As each year passed, my resistance became less about hugging people I didn’t know and more about realizing my boundaries didn’t matter. I want to teach my daughter differently.

The social reset that paved the way for new norms

In 2020, I became a first-time mom. As if postpartum chaos and sleepless nights weren’t enough, the pandemic hit and left us with isolation and an unexpected reset. I was relentless about not exposing her to risk as an infant, but she still babbled and smiled on FaceTime with my family. Their connection grew despite the limitations and distance.

After being apart for so long, we were all excited about our first gathering. I walked through the door, holding my daughter, and the kitchen was lined with my white-haired elders; their faces lit up as we entered. The day they could pinch her cheeks and smother her with kisses had finally arrived.

Arms reached out, smiles widened, and baby coo sounds filled the air. My daughter took one look around, gripped my hair in one hand, my collar in the other, and let out a startled wail.

There was an immediate and collective sigh of disappointment. The matriarchs and patriarchs of my family had never been challenged by a 1 year old. They stepped closer, hoping that proximity would encourage her to leap into their arms. She cried louder.

Their arms dropped, their smiles turned to frowns, and the bribery ensued: “I got you a pretty doll, and I’m going to be so sad if you don’t give me a hug.” Another aunt leaned closer and said, “Don’t you love me? I really love you!”

While I knew those statements came from a place of love and care, I looked my daughter in the eyes and said, “It’s OK, you can stay with me.” She released the grip on my hair and shirt, rested her head on my shoulder, and let out a sigh of relief.

I looked at my aunts and uncles, feeling both nervous and empowered. I reassured them that she would warm up to them on her own time and in her own way.

I took a chance and created a teaching moment

I started a conversation with my family that we never had before, and explained that what was considered disrespectful in their generation is now considered self-respect in mine.

The family gatherings continued. Sometimes my daughter would run to the door to greet them and hang on their neck with glee; other times, she would run by them, shouting “hi!” and go straight to the couch.

As the years have passed, their expectations have shifted, and their disappointment is no longer in the air. Comments have gone from “Are you going to let your daughter get away with not giving me a hug and kiss?” to “Okay, I’ll be here when she wants to play.”

Respect and love can now take on different forms. That’s a tradition worth passing down.

• My first husband died unexpectedly when we were both in our 20s.
• Becoming a widower taught me that romantic love is not the only kind of love out there.
• Getting married again doesn’t mean that I will erase my widowhood.

As I filled out the intake paperwork at my annual physical, I quickly clicked through all the standard demographic information, halting as I reached the marital status question. I hovered over the dropdown menu before clicking “widowed.” I realized that next year I would be clicking “married.”

Though I will consider myself both “married” and “widowed” after my coming wedding, the binaries that govern paperwork will not honor this joint identity, erasing a title that I have come to embrace in the past four years since my husband’s death.

I was a widow in my 20s

Eli died in an accident when he was 25. We were newlyweds, embarking on a life together and humming with excitement for all the future held. Overnight, that future we had spent years discussing and planning evaporated.

Many other young people I know who have lost partners have grappled with the title “widow” or “widower,” words that rarely conjure images of people in their 20s with potentially decades of life ahead. But, as I attended dozens of grief groups, sitting among others who had lost loved ones, I realized that partner loss is unusual in having a title I could claim.

There is no equivalent for someone mourning a sibling, a child, or a friend, no single word to signal the magnitude of that perpetual pain. Grateful for the terminology available to me, I quickly adopted “widow,” weaving it into my identity.

Widowhood has redefined how I live in countless ways, but three lessons have lit my path forward.

I say ‘yes’ more now

First, I have fought (and continue to fight) to let go of the pervasive culture of delayed gratification. I am haunted by the number of times I said “no” to Eli in favor of pursuing a future moment of joy rather than relishing the present.

I said no to spontaneous weekend trips because I deemed it more responsible to save for a bigger vacation later. I said no to small pleasures, such as theater tickets and late-night snacks at the bodega, because I was budgeting for future milestones and increasing my contributions to retirement accounts. I said no to quiet moments together at the end of long workdays because I was preoccupied with climbing a career ladder.

Now, rather than living for a future that might or might not come, I try to say yes — to joy, to love, and sometimes to a touch of chaos, even when it feels impractical or risky. Celebrating the present is often a messy endeavor, but it is undoubtedly a way of living.

There’s more than romantic love

Second, I was raised in a sea of cultural narratives that centered romantic love as the ultimate love. And it was for me. But when it slipped through my fingers, I realized that what I missed most about our partnership was the love that had been nurtured and developed in our friendship.

After Eli’s death, the love that sustained me came from expanding the boundaries of connection — in the friends who could sense how I was doing by the tone of my voice, in the family that welcomed me for weeks on their futons when I couldn’t bear to be home alone, and in random strangers who understood my loss through their own experiences. Love is an unlimited resource that doesn’t subscribe to any hierarchy. There is so much to go around.

I live like any day could be my last

Third, I now live each day knowing it could be my last, or worse, the last for someone I love. Rebuilding my life after loss has meant learning to find peace in uncertainty and to hold both hope and fear simultaneously. Some days, the unknown feels paralyzing, and other days it sharpens my attention and makes the ordinary sparkle. As I look toward a future of getting remarried, the joy is tinged with my awareness of tragedy. Yet that discomfort makes love, in all forms, feel even more urgent.

I’ll be honest, for me, neither time nor new relationships have healed my loss. The grief hasn’t softened into something easier to bear. The sadness has shifted as my life has changed, but I don’t miss Eli any less than the day he died. If anything, I miss him more, devastated by all that he has missed these last four years.

I now walk through my life seeing all its fragile edges, the delicate seams that could instantly unravel and swallow me whole. But walking the tightrope, hand in hand with dozens of others, including my exceptional fiancé, has made the balancing act not only bearable but also beautiful.

Becoming “married” again is not an act of erasure, as I sometimes fear; instead, it’s an homage to my widowhood. I now realize that choosing love, living in the present, and acknowledging the magnitude of uncertainty is the truest way to find Eli’s wandering spirit in every corner of my life.

I am beyond grateful to be getting married again. And I am beyond grateful to be a widow for the rest of my life.