Have a support network in place

We recently had a single professional woman arrange to stay in the Canoe House for a month. She had taken a job in Pahoa and had only arrived on the Big Island two weeks previously and was staying at another vacation rental. When she came to look at our rental she complained that the first place she stayed at wasn't described accurately on the web, and the house was infested with fleas! Our rental wasn't available for another week but she agreed to rent it at that time.

A day before she was supposed to move-in, she calls us from Massachusetts to cancel her reservations because she had moved back home. She was unhappy with her new job and her car was hit by a drunk driver and she couldn't take it anymore!

The point I want to make with this story is it is very crucial to have some sort of support network in place when you do something big like move to an island in the middle of the Pacific. We were there. When we moved we didn't have any friends or family here to help us. I imagine if this woman had stayed with us from her initial arrival to the Big Island, we could have acted as her support network and perhaps reassured her, been her friend and given her the support she needed. Her experience probably would have been totally different and she would still be living her dream in Hawaii.