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My Global Village

This post is a bit of a break from the usual hum drum of my blog, hopefully in a good way! Just a personal anecdote from me, not documenting my pregnancy or writing a letter to my kid, just me.

This past weekend I had the privilege of flying to NYC for four days and spending the weekend with some of my closest girlfriends in the world…. girls that I met online. When I got engaged in December 2007 I already knew that we were going to have a destination wedding and I was so excited to get planning. I quickly found a message board through theknot.com devoted to planning destination weddings, the DW Board. Since then I’ve been talking to these ladies, many on a daily basis, for almost five years. We’ve gotten married, saw our honeymoon phase come and go, gone through the process of trying to conceive, gotten pregnant, many girls have lost pregnancies, we’ve had babies and we’re raising babies. We started on public message boards but have since moved to a private forum where we can totally be ourselves without worrying about strangers, or people we know in real life, looking at our posts. It’s a pretty incredibly community and I’m so thankful to be a part of it. We are spread out over the entire United States and two of the members live in Europe. These girls have been with me through some of the most significant moments of my life and among them I have found some of my closest friends in the world.

This weekend the transition from talking online for 4+ years to hanging out in person was virtually seamless. We all already knew each other, we could pick up mid conversation and it was like we hang out in person all of the time. It was fabulous to have real time conversations with everyone and seeing more of peoples personalities. One member said it best – “The people I though I would like in person, I really like! And the people I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about them in person… I really like!” and I think we all felt like that.

I’ve never been the type of person that runs with a large, established crowd. My friends tend the be varied and spread out. Don’t get me wrong, I have friends that are local, but I don’t have very many and my best friends have always been elsewhere. I honestly don’t know what I would do if I had a group of  local best friends to hang out with all the time. I’ve never even imagined it because I don’t really think it’s possible unless a lot of people move here or I make a bunch of new best friends! I dream of someday having a community like Kelle Hampton talks about where neighbors take care of each other and the kids all grow up together.

Even though it’s hard for me and sometimes I feel sad about it, I know why it’s like this. I started early in life by attending summer camp 500 miles from home in New York State. Most campers were local or from neighboring Ohio so I made friends that lived far away. I wrote lots of letters in those days. When I went to college I chose a small, out of state school where I was the only one from my area. I lost touch with most of my high school friends and my two best friends from college live in Ohio. (Although I count myself very fortunate to have other close college friends as a part of my local friends group). After college I lived in Japan for over a year and when I left, another great girlfriend stayed and she hasn’t come back yet. Do you sense a theme? I’ve never been the type to stay in one place and as a result, my friends are really spread out. That’s just me.

When I left NYC on Sunday night I felt really sad that I probably wouldn’t see most of these girls again for another year, and maybe longer for some. (I’m very fortunate that two of the girls live about an hour away though so I know I’ll see them!) It’s hard to go from being surrounded by your good friends to being alone with a toddler all day. Monday was really hard for me. Reality slapped me in the face and I was bummed out that I don’t have what so many other people seem to have, a great group of local friends who have known each other forever. Other mothers who know what I’m going through and can come by whenever. Etc. Etc.

Maybe someday I’ll have something like that, but for now I’m so thankful for the amazing relationships that I have with the girls I met through the simple fact that we all wanted to get married somewhere amazing. That’s what brought us together in the first place but it’s a testament to the character of these ladies that we’ve become such good friends that we’re still at it almost 5 years later. I sometimes wish that my village of family and friends was immediately available and close at hand but I have a pretty amazing global village of people who will always support me and my family. That’s something I’m thankful for every day.

 

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