When I first began blogging in 2006, I didn’t do it to write, I did it to share. This was before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and texting. So, in order to share with my friends across the country, who I had met online, I created a blog, as did they. All on the same day.

As days passed, I enjoyed sharing the stories of my life with them. I couldn’t wait for them to read and to comment. I couldn’t wait until they shared on their blogs, so I could read and comment. We created our own little blogging community.  We could share our ideas, our days or support with each other. It felt like six homes, sharing a cul-de-sac and we were all neighbors. The only thing missing was being able to share an egg or a stick of butter, if someone needed it.

Upon checking my email one day, I received a comment. This comment wasn’t from Christy or Tracey or Jenn, this comment was from a stranger.

A STRANGER.

Blogging was so new to me, I didn’t realize people I didn’t know could read my blog. But as days, weeks and years passed, it was those strangers that created a community with me that was stronger than anything I had ever been a part of. We shared our love, our successes, our failures and our grief with people, we, for the most part, had never laid eyes on.

When I lost my twin sons, this blogging community played a role in my healing. I could write my real, raw emotions. I could share the thoughts and pain that crushed me and in return, they listened. It wasn’t awkward, they didn’t avert their eyes, they didn’t lose their footing when tears formed in my eyes. They sat, they listened, strong and firm, their hands on my back urging me to share more because they wanted to hear. They wanted to help.

And so today, so many friends in my life on social media, they are actual people I have never seen or touched in real life. (many I have and I’m so grateful and happy about that.) But I’m forty-two years old and my life feels rich because of the relationships I have with them, thanks to the depths of myself that I was able to share with them, and they with me.

“Indeed, that is a the every core of the blogging world — random, anonymous vastness of the internet distilled down into endless, overlapping communities of the like-minded souls” (a quote from Jennifer Weisberg.)

So, whether you read blogs or write blogs, whichever piece of this world you play a part, it’s a critical part and it’s a wonderful world that I hope comes back to what it once was.

I know I’ll do my part.