Reader's Digest Australia Dec/Jan 2025

K AREN TAUTGES MALINAK watches her herd of 20 goats from the kitchen window as she waits for her family to arrive. It’s a clear summer day in Independence, Minne- sota—population 3,644, half an hour outside Minneapolis—where she lives with her husband, Dave Malinak. She holds a pink coffee mug in her hands. “Momsmake everything better,” it reads. Karen’s life revolves around her farm, which is also the home base for her goat’s milk soap business, Rapha Farms. As we lean against her cluttered kitchen counter, Karen tucks her bobbed silver hair behind an ear and checks the time. “They should be here soon,” she says, her vowels drawn out by her native Minnesota accent. I’m due to meet each of Karen’s four daughters, four sons-in-law and 12 grandchildren over the next two days. Karen and Dave only recently moved to this farm. Because their workshop remains under construction, the soap- making happens wherever there’s 128   December 2025/January 2026 space. The living room is filled with racks of finished bars, labeled by scent: tea tree, lilac, lemongrass. Silicon molds cover a long table, and vats of essential oils line the walls. The small kitchen is stacked high with hand blenders. There is no room for furni- ture, hardly space to walk. Where, then, to put the family who will soon arrive? As if on cue, Karen’s daughter Michelle, along with her husband and two sons, pulls in. The boys, ages 9 and 7, hop out of the car and hand over gifts: a jigsaw puzzle for Dave and a hand- made condolence card for Karen (as the day before, Karen had to put down Angel, her elderly Maltese). Karen pins the card to her refrigera- tor, beneath a photo of three other grandsons—boys whom Michelle, her husband and her sons have never met. That’s because Michelle and her brood aren’t exactly Karen’s real family. Karen “adopted” them as a surrogate grand- mother in the lonely years after her bio- logical daughters turned her away. Karen andMichellemet inNovember 2023 on a Facebook group called Surro- gate Grandparents USA, where older and younger Americans connect over a mutual need for family. Many of the posts read like tiny, tragic personal ads: “We want grandparents who want to have pizza nights with us, attend base- ball and basketball games, have ice cream dates, take bike rides, just genu- inely have fun with us and our boys.” “My children need more than just me to love them. I can’t be their mama, daddy, aunt, uncle, grandma and grandpa forever! We joke about it, but it’s true and it sits as a pit in my stomach.” “One lonely grandma here. I would love to share affection and attention with a nearby family.” Donna Skora, a retired paralegal from Summerfield, Florida, created Surro- gate Grandparents USA in 2015. “Every- body needs some kind of support sys- tem, emotionally,” she says. Some members have lost loved ones, while others have never had families of their Karen and Dave Malinak moved to rural Minnesota to accommodate their growing herd. readersdigest.com.au    129 National Interest reader ’ s digest