Make a connection, Make it count, Don't forget it...

Before I started blogging over here, I had a blog for a couple of years that started on Yahoo360 and then moved over to a site called Multiply. I started at the urging of a friend in Minnesota, who had some "real life" friends who were bloggers on there. A large group of us became a family. In that family, there was a woman named Stacey. Stacey was friends in real life with my other blog friends Melisa, Mandi, Michelle and Dawn. I considered these women to that I met online to be close friends, even though I had not met many of them in person. They were my sounding board, my cheerleaders, my support system. Stacey was pregnant in 2007 with her 3rd son and in December, 2007, she lost baby Henry. During the same week (I can't remember exactly the timeframe) she was diagnosed with leukemia. It struck all of us to the core. We helped her fight her battle, someone I had never met but who's strength I was incredibly inspired by. While she was fighting her first rounds of chemo, I wanted to do something for her to let her know I was fighting along with her. There was a blogging term that we all used to use - FTC - which meant "First to Comment" and somewhere along the line, it became Stacey's and her friend's motto: but it meant something very different. It meant "Fuck the Cancer" or "fight the cancer" to the kiddos who asked what it meant. So, I emailed all my friends and asked that they show me what FTC meant in pictures.. I was overwhelmed by the response of the people I knew (who didn't know Stacey) but wanted to help me cheer her up. Finally, after getting about 10 versions of pictures of my friends with signs that said "FTC" I wrote a blog to Stacey. I was shocked at the response I got. I knew it would mean something to her, but had no idea that others would want to do the same. It was awesome to see how many people started sending in pictures, then our friend Mandi created a video with all the pictures and also encouraged people to get tested to see if their bone marrow was a match.



FTC Video

THEN, Melisa, organized a movement to make a quilt for Stacey and we all made a quilt square and Melisa's mom sewed it all together. And the movement continued and turned into a benefit for Stacey in May, 2008 in Minnesota. I was not able to attend but many of my blog friends flew and drove in from various locations to be there to meet and support Stacey. If memory serves me correctly, STacey was not able to attend but they presented her with the quilt.

Stacey's Surprise Quilt.wmv


Over the past year and a half, our little family of Multipliers kind of fell apart. I sometimes felt as if I had lost my best friends.. there wasn't one thing that "broke" us up, just life got in the way. My loss of some of my friends from Multiply is one of the reasons I always say I have a hard time connecting here. I'm still great friends with some of my Multiply peeps, but others, I have no idea what's going on in thier lives.

I always kept an eye on Stacey via Facebook and was always super excited when she was feeling good and moving on with her life.

On Friday, Stacey lost her battle with cancer... it has been on my mind ever since. I had somewhat forgotten about the pictures and the quilt and the benefit until Melisa posted the above videos on FB..

My point of this is to say, even if you haven't met people in "real life" it is entirely possible for someone you've never met to have such a huge impact on your life, for them to change your life, to want to be better, to want to do good. Embrace the blogging experience, I know I intend to.
xo,js