Creating Family and Community

Many refugees from the Other Side during the reign of the Pro-Health and Diet Laws had friends and organizational contacts who looked out for them and managed their escape/s from The Other Side to FatLand. However, there were also quite a few immigrants who managed, with their last reserves and cash and strength, to make it to FatLand on their own. They were broke, lonely and depressed.

The FatLand Board and therapists saw quickly that these people needed a lot of time and help. The way they gave a sense of community and family to these new FatLanders in dire straits was to adopt them. Every FatLander who did not have relatives in FatLand was adopted by a FatLander.

It is worth mentioning that fully half of these immigrants had parted company with their birth families long before. Most of their birth families were ashamed of them. Some of them were just beginning to develop new "families" of their own, some with good friends who appreciated them and thus fulfilled a family-type need for warmth and affection that their families were incapable of meeting.

So besides needing people to talk with, these immigrants needed someone to tell them that they were wonderful and worthy people. The counselors fulfilled their roles; others told them that they were needed and wanted. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort to manage to get so many new FatLanders to be proud of their bodies, their beings, themselves.

It was worth it.