Finding a true family is the biggest quest of a person's life. This woman found it in her adoptive parents who took her in when she was a baby and did everything they thought would be the best for her. Including ways of keeping her biological mom involved in her life. Alicia Holloway is a ballerina and a former contestant on the show "Bachelor." She recently shared her adoption story on social media and one thing that her adoptive mom did for her biological mom is grabbing people's attention and touching their hearts. Holloway shared that she met her birth mom a day before she turned 18 but before that, her adoptive mom found a beautiful way to keep her biological mother more involved in her life.
Holloway's adoptive mother promised her birth mom that she would send an update on how Holloway was doing every six months. So from the moment she adopted Holloway, she sent her birth mom a picture and a note about how the daughter was doing every June and December. But there was another catch. As Holloway's biological mom had told her family that the baby was stillborn she couldn't receive updates at her own house. She asked for the pictures to be sent to her best friend's house instead. Because of this ritual, her birth mom was watching over Holloway in a indirect way as she grew up. It was a wonderful gesture as the ballerina shared that it was really difficult for her biological mother to give her up for adoption. Indeed it can be very stressful to not know how your child is doing once they have been given up for adoption. Several adoptive families don't keep in touch for multiple reasons.
As Holloway's biological mom already had three children she didn't want her family to find out about her but still wanted to be a part of her daughter's life in some way. She got that opportunity in the form of those pictures and notes every six months which would consist of either a dance picture or a school picture of the ballerina. Holloway didn't know about this until she was 18 years old and found the gesture from her adoptive mom truly heartwarming. In another video, Holloway shares how she met her birth mom for the first when she was 18 and it didn't go as she had expected it. She says that she thought she would feel a very strong connection with the birth mom but she didn't feel it. She says, "My whole life I thought when I'll meet my birth mother it will be this beautiful magical thing." She didn't feel anything when they met. She said, "It was like looking at another woman." She added that she thought she would feel a deep connection but it was actually her birth mom and adoptive mom who were crying and hugging each other.
Image Source: Instagram | @tjbrownwvu
Image Source: Instagram | @kimburnsgower
The adoptive mom's gesture had forged a true connection between the two women. People took to the comments to praise the adoptive mom. One Instagram user @kc_033 wrote, "Your adopted mom is one in a million. They don’t make them like her anymore." Another user @iamchanette wrote, "You were meant from the beginning of time to be with your adopted parents your biological mom was just the vessel." Alicia Holloway's story has sparked people's curiosity. The story has made people so curious that they keep asking for more details and Holloway gives those in whichever way she can. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful story of finding family, love, and kindness.
You can follow Alicia Mae Holloway's work as an actor, ballerina, and model on Instagram.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on February 2, 2024. It has since been updated.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.