Opal discovers the true value of friends and family when she moves to Naomi and finds herself alone for the first time in her life. She says to Winn-Dixie: “You don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old” (21). Opal’s idea of friends and family, and the loss and loneliness she associates with those relationships, troubles her from the beginning of the novel. Winn-Dixie coming into her life teaches her how to welcome people in, despite those losses.

Opal struggles to understand the meaning of friendship, and how to forgive people their pasts and their idiosyncrasies, for much of the book. She is not friends with anyone her own age, finding Amanda Wilkinson “pinch-faced” and the Dewberry boys ignorant and rude. Opal’s adult friends, Otis and Gloria and Miss Franny, help her discover the power of forgiveness, particularly when it comes to friendship. Gloria reminds Opal, “But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can't always judge people by the things they done.