The Part of You That Turns Strangers Into Family

When Strangers Become Friends and New Places Become Home

Have you ever moved to a new city, a new state or even a new country—and known nobody at all?

You were all alone.

Maybe you were following a dream. Changing jobs. Starting a new chapter. Maybe you followed a lover and the relationship ended, leaving you somewhere unfamiliar and suddenly on your own.

If you’ve ever had an experience like this, you already know The Orphan within.

The empowered Orphan comes to life through the relationships you begin to make in that new place. You arrived with no friends, no family, no contacts. All you really brought with you was yourself.

And then, slowly, you begin to find your people.

The Orphan seeks belonging. But, more importantly, The Empowered Orphan learns how to create belonging.

You find people who may be similar to you, but different as well. Because The Orphan understands that our shared experiences connect us, while our differences make life interesting.

We learn through each other.

We discover parts of ourselves through other people and through what they mirror back to us. Sometimes we don’t even recognise that the qualities we admire in our new friends—or our oldest friends—are also parts of ourselves waiting to be seen.

So when you arrive in a new place and feel like an orphan—with no family, no friends, no contacts—you eventually discover something powerful:

You can rebuild.

You can create a new life with new people.

You can even find a new family—of your choosing.

This is one of the great gifts of The Orphan: the ability to create a sense of belonging from within, and then find it reflected in

the world around you.

And we do this repeatedly throughout our lives.

We do it as children, perhaps walking into kindergarten for the first time and finding our place amongst strangers.

We do it at school.

We do it when we begin a new job, enter a new workplace or start a new entrepreneurial adventure.

Again and again, we enter unfamiliar worlds as The Orphan.

And slowly but surely, those unfamiliar worlds become familiar.

Strangers become friends. Sometimes, if you are lucky, a special stranger becomes your special one.

And new places become home.

The Orphan becomes empowered because they discover they are capable of finding connection wherever life takes them. The Orphan starts by seeking belonging. Then, through trial, error, experience and gained wisdom, learns how to create belonging.

They find their people.

Even when they keep moving.

Even when people keep changing.

They are never alone.

PS. Discover the part of you that still believes in your dreams in this article HERE.

Ben Grant Mitchell

Author of Your Word Is Law

Founder, Grant Empowerment

Creator of P.A.T.H. Coaching™ , B.A.M. Coaching™ and Author Your Life: Archetype Design