My cup runneth over

I've talked a few times before at how truly amazed I am by the lives I've touched or the lives that have touched me simply through the screen into a world called the internet but I am simply blown away this week.
It all started with the bump Aug. 2009.  Most, if not all of you that read this met me on there.  Within my first week I met a woman named SarahL77.  We were the same age and both starting TTC, and she was nice enough to send me a PM telling me a few things we had in common and we could support each other.  New to the forum - let alone the idea of "getting to know" people on the internet was totally foreign to me.  I had only browsed The Knot for wedding ideas, not used the boards to talk with people.  I was too leary to reach out and tell someone personally one on one so I was grateful for someone else throwing the first life line out to say "We're together on this!"  But still, I guarded my emotions a bit.  In real life many would call me the "strong stoic type".  I don't wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I wasn't ready to start with strangers on the internet.  Not yet.

After a few months I had a group I felt closely connected with, more and more I opened up.  We would share all kinds of girl talk, relationship chat, emotions, etc.  And after 8 months together TTC most of them were moving over to 3T (aka Trouble trying to conceive) and I followed (known at that time as the "Mass exodus" from TTGP.  As the months went by many got pregnant and moved on.  I learned to love a new group, but I missed my friends that I had grown to know that first year.  It felt similar to 6th grade when my friends abandoned me because I wasn't "cool" enough.  Now, I know these girls didn't do it on purpose...it was simply the nature of the board.  Get PG, move on.

Luck would have it they felt close too and I learned a year later they had created their own forum in a secret off shoot - and I was being invited into the secret lair.  A safe place no one could just enter.  Oh how special I felt that they remembered me, even though many of them I had not "seen" online or talked to in that year or so.  Reconnecting with them felt like when people first found facebook and reconnected with their old high school buddies.  If felt like coming home.  These ladies knew me.  And the new group I had learned to love just as well got the same idea about the same time...make a private place for just us.  And thus started what I truly felt was my support groups.

We don't have fights.  We don't have rigid "rules" of etiquette because we're all smart and loving people.  We understand we come from all walks of life - rich, poor, from the far left to the far right, religious to atheist.  We all except we're different but share this common bond.  That bond is love, support, and kindness.  If you had told me five years ago I'd write that; I'd say that sounded way too mushy and hippie to me.  I'm not like that.  It's not puppies and rainbows (don't get me wrong).  We're still foul mouthed chics and making sexual jokes like a group of guys.  Sharing links to fart-proof men's underwear as gift ideas for the husbands as a joke and asking for clothing or cooking advice.

And through this, the toughest month of my life, the two groups (there are maybe four of us that straddle both groups) came together to show their love for me.  The most thoughtful gifts, and tributes to my lost son came in the mail with beautiful cards.  Treats only friends would know I love and personal touches only they could do.  My heart overflowed and tears streamed down my face.  And I realized today that I am like the Grinch at the end of the show- my heart has grown three sizes bigger in these years.  THEY have done that.  No one else but these "strangers" of which I've personally met only a handful of IRL had taught me that it really is OK to fully open yourself up.  I mean - sure, I'm this way with my family, my husband, and my three closest girlfriends.  But I never thought I could expand that circle of trust to so many.  That I would have so large of a trusted group.  I am truly amazed.

I guess what I'm saying is this.  If you're reading this, and you're like me and you had not ever reached out.  Not taken that step to personally say to someone "You're not alone" or "I accept you just as you are"...it's OK to do it.  Sure, they might not respond.  But you might end up having some of the most amazing friends that have your back through just one common thread in the beginning.  And we may still have our differences politically, religiously, whatever.  But deep down, there are so many things to share.  And your heart might just grow three sizes bigger too.