#MicroblogMondays: Online friends are real friends :)

Katy at Childless Collective wrote a blog post for the World Childless Week website recently titled "Online Friends are Real Friends." 

Amen!  My online friends are just as "real" to me as the people I know "in real life," and in many cases, they have been there for me over the past 26 years in a way that my "real life" family and friends have often not. I was lucky enough to find a "real life" local support group shortly after we lost Katie in 1998 (and wound  up staying 10 years as facilitators), but that group only met twice a month at most. Especially in those early days of bewildered grief, I craved something more.  And I found it, online.  (Even in those pre-blogging, pre-social media, pre-Zoom days!)  

I've written in the past about some of these friends -- the women (and a very few men) on a pregnancy loss email list I joined a few weeks after Katie's stillbirth;  the friends I made on the iVillage Childless Living message board in the early 2000s, several of whom I'm still in touch with regularly today.  And, since 2007 (17 years!!) bloggers.  I've been lucky enough to meet a few of these online friends face to face over the years too.  

Add one more to the count. :)  

A couple of Sunday nights ago, Mel -- the Stirrup Queen herself  -- messaged me:  "So totally random question - are you around this upcoming week because we just decided to come to Toronto."  

Me:  "Are you serious??!!  I would LOVE to meet up!!!!" 

If you're reading this post, you no doubt know Mel too, and all she's done for the blogging community over the past 18 years.  Blogging is, admittedly, not the force it once was (although I think it's just taken on a new form lately, i.e., Substack) -- but there was a time, pre-social media, when there was a flourishing community of adoption, loss and infertility bloggers -- and Mel was at the centre of it all, with her gargantuan blogroll and other regular community-building features and projects -- like this #MicroblogMondays, the Friday Roundup (which recently marked 1000 Friday posts!), the Lushary (which was always a favourite of mine, lol), the Barren Bitches Book Tour, the annual Creme de la Creme list of our favourite blog posts from the year, and so much more.  

Mel responded to some of my early tentative comments on her blog -- and encouraged me to start my own, back in (gulp) October 2007 -- almost 17 YEARS AGO.  To get to finally meet her -- AND her family, after hearing/reading about them all for so many years (from the twins' first day of kindergarten (!) to their departure for college!) -- was a surreal experience.  

(The hugs, however, were very real.  :)  )   

Several days and even more emails back & forth later, deluging Mel with suggestions for places they might want to visit during their stay (lol), I trekked downtown via subway to the Toronto Eaton Centre for the first time since before the pandemic, and we had dinner together on the patio of one of the restaurants there. (I had warned Mel about all the construction, roadwork and repairs going on in the city -- never dreaming that would include SANDBLASTING the walls of the old church across from the restaurant where we were eating!!  What a racket!  Thankfully, they did stop work for the evening, after we'd been sitting there about 45 minutes...!)  And after dinner, we walked through the mall to the Indigo bookstore, where Mel and I wound up standing and talking for more than an hour in the Mystery aisle ;) before I reluctantly headed home again.     

The visit was far too short, but I'm so glad the stars aligned to make it happen. 

Are online friends real friends? You bet.  ❤ 

You can read Mel's thoughts about her Toronto visit here. 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.