Ania Zimnoch Ella and her surrogate grandmother Bebe enjoy cooking together and other activities. Ania Zimnoch, a photographer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, found herself weathering a rough patch several years ago. Her husband of 16 years had left, making her the sole parent to her daughter Ella, now nine years old.
Zimnoch’s mother, who lived all the way on the other side of the country, was also ill. “I was lonely and going through a difficult period in my life,” Zimnoch told HuffPost. Zimnoch’s loneliness led her to search online for some sort of solution.
While browsing one night, she discovered a Facebook group for “surrogate grandparents”: families with children looking for the kind of care and support that biological grandparents often provide — and older individuals seeking that kind of a caring relationship — write posts introducing themselves and then wait to see if anyone else in the group is a potential match. Advertisement Figuring she didn’t have anything to lose, Zimnoch said she wrote a post revealing “the truth” about her current situation. She also wrote that she had “a daughter who’s very spunky and creative, and we’re looking for connections.
” Because the Facebook group is national, there’s no guarantee of finding a match in your geographical area. At first, Zimnoch said, most of the people who responded to her post were “out-of-state well-wishers.” She did meet up with one woman who lived nearby, but “she turn.