I’m grateful to have some wise and caring friends checking in on me these days. REMEMBER, your single, extroverted friends who live alone view these stay-at-home directives as a prison sentence. Don’t ASK what they need. They’ll just say “I’m fine!” YOU’RE what they need. Schedule a FaceTime hang, work out together, swap your favorite Quarantini recipes and demonstrate making your recipe. Here are four other lifesaving things you can do for your single friends who live alone.
1. Send them a meal or a pizza. Just enter their address into whatever delivery service you use and send them something delicious. They might not need the food but they need to feel remembered, cared for. Or if you head out to a restaurant to pick up a meal for your family, order an extra entree and drop it off on their doorstep.
2. Play a game together. Bypass the online gaming platforms and go old school. Invite a single adult to join a family board game over FaceTime. Or go head to head with a game you both have like Battleship. Grid games can also work if you just mimic each other’s moves on your own board. Try checkers, chess, or connect four.
3. Go for a walk or run together. Schedule a time you’ll both head out and invite them to join you in THEIR neighborhood. Just pop in your AirPods and chat as you walk. Describe what you’re seeing. Maybe even prep them with some complex topic you want to discuss: “what has this virus taught you so far?” Walking together in silence is also okay. You don’t have to fill every moment with words. Just walk together, apart.
4. Watch a movie together. Is your family gathering in the living room for a movie or documentary on your favorite streaming platform? Invite a single adult to join you over FaceTime. Just start the film at the same time on your respective TV’s and they’ll have someone to make all their awkward comments to.
Your single friend who lives alone is falling deeper into the crazies every day. Give their soul the relational oxygen it needs with a regular phone call or try one of the options above. We’re better together!
Got any other ideas for how to care for your single friends during social-distancing? Share your ideas in the comments below.