How to Build a Support System When You Feel Like You Have No One

How do you find or build a community when you don’t really have one? Pointers on steps and resources?
This is a question I received during a recent private event Q&A while discussing the Lack of Community Overwhelm Culprit™.
And I realized this is a really great topic to cover here since it is so common to find yourself in this position. Especially after you experience some sort of a pivotal life event where you find yourself having no community around you that really understands what it is you’re going through.
Because here’s the truth, most high performers, they don’t lose their community, they outgrow it.
If you’ve recently experienced a major pivotal life event, things like getting married or having a baby or losing a loved one, maybe a medical diagnosis or even a big promotion and have found yourself in a position where you’re surrounded by people who do not truly understand what that experience is like. Then you’re definitely gonna wanna stick around.
By the end of this episode, you’re gonna know the [00:01:00] exact steps that you need to take to start building your own community, even if you’re an introvert or an ambivert like I am.

If you’re new here, my name is Corrie LoGiudice, otherwise known as Corrie Lo, and I’m a professional keynote speaker, leadership expert, facilitator, and author who helps leaders transform overwhelm into confident action, even in times of crisis.
Now, this question came up as part of a workshop audience’s Q&A, and it’s a really great question because all too often we talk about how having a community is super important, but no one ever talks about how to actually go about building it from scratch.
As I share in my book, The Five Overwhelm Culprits™: Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success, I found myself in this exact situation following my divorce.
So I was a newly single mom of a five-month-old in a brand-new neighborhood on Long Island. I had actually moved all the way [00:02:00] from Brooklyn, New York, to Long Island, and all of a sudden I found myself two counties away and a forty-five minute train ride away from all of my friends and all of my support network.
There was no one in my personal circle, i.e. my family, as well as my work, ’cause I worked with my family. For those of you who don’t know me, before doing this work, I was a corporate SVP and the third generation in charge of running my family’s business. So no one in my personal circle, my family, people I worked with, none of them understood abuse or divorce survivorship.
That’s why I was a single mom. I’d actually left an abusive marriage, and it was very, very high conflict. And it was during this phase that I realized I wasn’t lacking people surrounding me. I had so many people surrounding me who loved me. family’s a strong, strong value of mine, and my family is there for me, ride or die.
So that wasn’t the issue. It was I was lacking the right people for the season of life I was in. Even my friends, who [00:03:00] were forty-five minutes away on the train, they didn’t understand divorce or abuse either. And in fact, to even further complicate it, I was the first person of all of my friends to have a kid.
So I literally felt like I was an island by myself on Long Island. So I knew kind of intuitively that there was something that I had to do to help with this. So I started doing what is now very commonplace, but back then, it was about eight, nine years ago at this point, I joined the local Facebook group.
And I was on this Facebook group, I was basically a lurker for a really long time, and I would, check out what restaurants to go to and things like that. There was always too, all these memes on, like, “Why is there a helicopter circling the neighborhood?” And people would post Ray Liotta escaping the helicopters in Goodfellas.
It’s a very New York thing to do. But either way, that was pretty much the whole community at that point. So I would just lurk. I didn’t really respond to anything there. But one day, there was a post that caught my eye, and it was a woman who was also a single [00:04:00] mom asking the community, “Hey, are there any other single moms here?”
And I was so excited to hear this because, number one, I was like, “Oh my God, there’s more of us.” And number two, I, commented after seeing the probably 50 or 60 women responding like, “Yeah, I’m a single mom.” And to that, my response was, “Yeah, I’m a single mom. Wouldn’t it be cool if we all had our own group here on Facebook?”
And didn’t think anything of it. Shut down, my phone, put it away, went to go hang out with my kid, watch Mickey’s Clubhouse or something like that, and all of a sudden, I hear, a ping on Facebook that I got another message. And when I go and I look at the message, I’m looking at it and I’m like, “This can’t be right.
There’s something wrong with this.” The message said, “Congratulations, you are the new admin of the South Shore Single Moms group.” And I was like, “There’s something seriously wrong with this. What is going on?” And following up that message, I get a message from the original poster. The OP sent me a message saying, “Hey, that was a really great idea.
I just set one up and I made you a co-admin.” And [00:05:00] my first thought was absolute sheer terror. I was like, “I don’t know these women. They don’t know me. What do I have in common with them?” And it was after I said that last line that I was like, “I have everything in common with these women. They all completely understand what I’m going through as a single mom.”
So I decided to really try to leverage this opportunity the best I could, and it started small. So it’d be like if I was going to the beach, I would put a post up and say “Hey, my son and I are going to the beach. We’re gonna be at mile marker five. If you wanna come join us, come on out.” And women did start coming out, and eventually the meetups got so large that we had to do things like, rent buses to do wine tours and take out big venues.
We would exchange babysitting, with our kids. Sometimes we’d do big events, too, where all the kids would come and play, and we would order a bunch of pizzas. So it was really fun, and it was a big group. And the reason that this group was so important for this phase of my life was these women saw how burnt out I was, and I talk about this often, too, on my channel as well as in my book, that for a long [00:06:00] period, I was commuting 20 hours a week.
So I was commuting four hours total, two hours going and two hours coming back a day, and I was so burnt out by this commute that the women in the group saw this and they interviewed and hired me a house cleaner to help me with it. And it was really through this experience that I realized that community isn’t something you find, it’s something you build.
Because had I not put myself outside of my comfort zone and commented on this pretty mundane Facebook group post, I never would have had this opportunity. So having heard that, I would love to know, do you need to build your own community from scratch? If so, comment below who you’re looking to be connected with, and we can all work together to make the right connections to help you build your own communities.
Now, most people, they build communities randomly, but the fastest way to build community is to get really specific about what you need. Note in the story that I shared, I didn’t just end up joining the local community group, [00:07:00] which I did initially to start. Where I really saw the biggest change was when I was in a niche group specifically for single moms because that was the challenge I was undergoing.
So you don’t necessarily need to be invited to a group. You can create one but you need to know what it is specifically that you need, what kind of support, what is it that you’re looking to learn. Another way to look at it, too, is who do you need more of in your life? I did a video on what I call the personal board of advisors.
You can watch it here. And through there, note who within your community can make up these people. And also note, too, your community can be made up of people who either volunteer to help you and support you and it goes both ways. Or it could be people that you pay to help you. It’s not all or nothing.
For example, my single mom friends, they hired me, the cleaner, but I ultimately paid her long-term, and that was a tremendous help . So it’s very rare you’re gonna have somebody who’s gonna volunteer to come and clean your house, but if it’s the type of support that you need for the season that you’re in, sometimes it’s worth [00:08:00] it, even short-term.
It’s never all or nothing.
So let’s kinda run through a couple of examples of what this might look like, because each season is very different and your needs are different. So let’s just say you just lost a loved one. The needs that you’re gonna experience during this, and I know ’cause I speak from experience, I’ve lost many people in my life, it’s number one, the need to not feel alone in your experience once everybody goes back to their day-to-day life. Most importantly.
And then also things like household support, childcare, meal planning. These are all things that are really important after you’ve lost a loved one. So some ideas on support that you could proactively go out to look for would be a support group for your specific loss. So for me, and I didn’t share it in the story before, but my past experience, I lost somebody to suicide, and finding a suicide loss support group was really, really important for me because I didn’t relate the same way as somebody who may have lost somebody to cancer.
It was a very fast, last-minute, no idea anything was going on kind of experience. And then [00:09:00] also, too, you carry a lot of, anger towards the person who did it. That’s very normal. So having a support group with people for that specific loss was very helpful because each type of loss is very different and unique, so being able to surround yourself with people who totally understand your grief and what you’re going through is so important.
So support groups for your specific loss. Things like childcare assistance was a big one for me. Being that I had a kid and my grief was so bad I couldn’t actually function around the house. Even things like household meal planning assistance. There’s a reason that meal trains are used often for things like grief or if you’re a new mom.
So let’s just say you just got a promotion, so that has you jumping into the deep end, that you’re now networking with new peers and other people in your industry that you’re not familiar with.
Your needs during this timeframe are gonna be to obviously learn the ropes, understand who the stakeholders are, possibly up-skill, your skill set. Possibly find a mentor or a sponsor. So make sure that you’re finding people that can help you connect those gaps.
Let’s say you just had a baby. We kinda touched on this briefly. Your needs [00:10:00] are gonna be making sure that you have friends who also have kids. That was something that I really struggled with early on because none of my friends had kids, so they didn’t understand. So making friends with people who also have children. Finding sufficient childcare, making sure you get enough sleep.
Having home management help around the house. So some ideas that you could look for to help this to fill that support circle, would be new mom support groups. There’s so many of them because it is so common to feel like you’re thrown into the deep end the second that you have your first baby.
Childcare assistance. It could be babysitting. It could be daycare. It could be any number of things. Even if you’re a stay-at-home mom, having a couple of hours a week to be able to take care of yourself is important. Household assistance, things like that. These are all different ways that you can find support, and again, it doesn’t always need to be something that you pay.
It could be people that you ask for help directly. A lot of times, especially when I had my kid, I was asking for help from my family. Not everybody may have that, but you can get creative with this. This is how you find your circle. And while you’re going through this too, and you’re [00:11:00] thinking through these needs that you have, who can you provide just as much value to them as they to you?
Are there ways that you could barter? Can you exchange favors? Can you support them in the same way that they could support you? From there, you’re gonna wanna network strategically. Now, this isn’t about meeting more people. It’s about meeting the right people for the life that you are building. So from here, you should have a very clear idea of who it is you’re looking to connect with.
Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your colleagues of who specifically you’re looking to connect with. Join online groups like I did. Facebook groups are amazing. You’ve got LinkedIn groups. You’ve got Meetup groups. There’s so many different places that you can go. You can also join in-person groups, clubs, associations, community groups.
Other ways you can meet people are attending work events, going to mixers. You could also search jobs and listing boards if you’re hiring help or if you’re looking for referrals. So there’s so many different ways that you can get out there, and you can start trying to make those connections.
Now, one of the most important things, though, is when you do finally make a connection with [00:12:00] somebody that can help you or support you and somebody that you want to grow and nurture that relationship long term, follow up immediately.
So many people go to networking events, and they collect all these business cards, and then they do nothing with them. So if you don’t follow up within a week, that connection is gone. They forgot about you. They’re onto the next thing. So make sure you’re scheduling one-on-ones within a week of meeting people.
It’s very similar to what I did. I became the single mom, godmother of that group, and the first thing I did within that week was I invited a bunch of people to go to the beach. It could be simple. So scheduling one-on-ones or meetups with groups of people within a week of meeting them.
You’ll also want to work to build and nurture those relationships. Put as much effort into them as you would like to see back to you. You wanna mirror that. And also, you wanna make sure that the relationship is a win-win for everybody involved. There will be times, like I mentioned, at the very beginning of this episode, where you will outgrow the people in your circle, and that is okay.
That is fine. Make sure that the time, attention, and effort that you’re [00:13:00] putting in to people who are helping and supporting you, that it is a win-win for everybody.
I know we covered a lot in this episode. So to recap, if you don’t find your community, you build it. And you build it by getting very specific on what it is you need and who specifically can help you with it, and then putting yourself in the right rooms and following through with the relationships that you start.
You wanna be strategic in determining what type of help you need and where you can get it. So do your research, and let your network know who you are looking to be connected with, because there’s no one on this planet that can help you better connect you with the folks that you need than your warm network, the people that already know, like, and trust you.
Put yourself out there to meet the people who could help, whether it be online, in person, conferences, meetings, events. You gotta put yourself out there. Think of me joining the silly local Facebook group when I first moved to the new community. If I could do it, you could do it, too. And then from there, commit to setting up one-on-ones and building long-term relationships with these people.
So hopefully you found my sharing this today helpful. If you have [00:14:00] any questions that you would like for me to answer, please feel free to leave them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to incorporate them into a future episode. And as I mentioned, I cover the Lack of Community Overwhelm Culprit™ in detail with even more strategies in my new book, The 5 Overwhelm Culprits™.
It’s available for purchase everywhere now, and it’s in the show notes. You could also learn more ways to work with me, whether that be one-on-one through advisory and coaching or with your organization and in terms of teams and group works for speaking and facilitation in the show notes as well.
So thank you so much for being here, and I can’t wait to see you on the next episode. I’ll see you next time.
Thanks for checking out the Next Step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Together, we’ll transform overwhelm into action, and we’ll keep taking the next step towards confident leadership. See you next time.