Enlightment?

I'm not sure if that's the correct word or not, but I had a moment of clarity awhile back.

It started with an online baby shower 2 bloggers had thrown for another. I hadn't seen this before. I thought it was the coolest idea ever! How great for these women to do that for the other?! As I clicked over to see what this "party" entailed, I came upon a few new blogs. As I skimmed a few entries on a few different blogs, I stopped at a particular woman's and couldn't tear my eyes away. I read from the beginning to the present. I soaked up every one of her words. I felt her feelings of sadness, happiness, joy, numbness, and anything thing else she felt.

I have no idea why this blog "spoke" to me, but it did. Her story and mine are NOTHING alike. We aren't from the same area. We aren't in the same place in our lives, the one and only thing we have in common is that we both blog.

There is another thing that we do have in common, but the circumstances are so different, it would be hard to connect the 2. She has suffered a loss. I don't generally connect to others solely on the basis of loss. I don't go out and search for blogs or groups to be a part of where people have suffered a loss such as mine. I did that when my mom first died, but it didn't help. Maybe it was because I was in a different place in my grief, or maybe for me, it's just too personal of a loss for me to join any random group. I haven't really put much thought into it, all I know is that it didn't work for me.

But after reading a few of this woman's blog entries, I realized that my feelings were being felt by another person. It wasn't just me and it wasn't all in my head. The feeling of time having no meaning, she had that too! The feeling of "eh, it doesn't matter. It's not like someone died", that happened to her, too. Of course, I feel horrible for her loss. Any one's loss, for that matter. But, to have another person put into words what goes on in my head, really helped me. I remember I was reading her blog during the time we were decorating our Christmas tree and I found an ornament from my childhood and I was in such a fog. I was a bit lost, but reading her words, was like a blast of fresh air in my face. Her words didn't push me directly to the surface or out of my fog, but as I thought about them and read more, I allowed myself to feel my loss.

I wanted to email her since I first started reading, but I didn't. I thought it would be a dumb thing to do. I thought maybe she would take it the wrong way, because I wouldn't be able to put into words what she did for me. Or worse, I was comparing my loss to hers and how much worse mine was. I didn't want to offend her. I didn't want to "scare" her. So, I just thought about it and her as I was going through Christmas and the anniversary of my mom's passing. Her words rang though my head during that time and they helped. She helped me. I wanted/needed her to know that.

I finally emailed her last weekend. It was a quick email, that made little to no sense at all. I didn't go into detail, I just thanked her for having the courage to write down her grief and because of that courage, I dug deep in myself and found some of my own. Her reply was so wonderful! She thanked me for emailing her and she didn't tell me I was crazy. She might have thought that, but she didn't say that! I hold this woman in high regard. She is a lot more courageous then I am and I hope that some day, I can be as courageous as she.