My mom was raising me and caring for her mom with Alzheimer's. Our neighbors became our village.

Courtesy of the author My mom moved us from Brooklyn to Michigan after my grandma developed Alzheimer's.

I helped care for my grandma while my mom navigated caregiving as a single parent.

Our cohousing community became an extended family that supported all of us.

I spent the first years of my life on the brownstone-lined streets of Brooklyn, waking up to the sounds of birds chirping mixed with car horns reverberating throughout the city.

Little did I know that my childhood would take an unexpected turn.

In the middle of first grade, my mom pulled me out of school , packed our suitcases, and moved us across the country to Michigan as my grandma, Lillian, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and needed extra support.

My immediate family is small, just my mom and me, and Michigan felt completely foreign at the time.

We moved into a co-housing community My mom always emphasized the importance of building family through community.

With that in mind, she moved us to Great Oak Cohousing, a community designed around the concept of independent living with shared amenities: a common house, an expansive garden, and a variety of gathering spaces, all collaboratively managed by residents.

I fell in love with Great Oak almost immediately.

It unlocked a lifestyle that had been missing in New York : raw nature all around us, the ability to run around independently, and an unmatched sense of community.

The author moved from New York to Michigan to help care for her grandmother.

Courtesy of the author We welcomed my grandma into our new home with open arms, picking her up from my aunt Heidi's house, where she lived during the week, and bringing her to ours for long weekends.

My grandma had visited us in New York when I was a baby, but beyond that, we hadn't spent much time together.