This weekend, I traveled several thousand miles to attend a party thrown by my friend Ellie. Ellie and I have known each other for about seven years now, and she is one of the dearest friends I have in my whole life. We've spent many late nights on the phone together and exchanged countless e-mails.

She was there for me with constant loving kindness when I was pregnant with my son, when I was sleep deprived and crazy from his constant infant crying, when I became pregnant with my daughter, when I found out my husband was a sex addict, when my marriage nearly fell apart, when I insisted my son was not autistic and then insisted he was and loved him fiercely either way, when I terminated a pregnancy, when my father-in-law died, when I struggled to work through it all. And I was there as she struggled to fix a marriage and couldn't figure out what was wrong, when she discovered that her husband was an alcoholic, when she filed for divorce, when that divorce turned ugly as a reality bending active addict can make it, and as she started to move on and make a new life for herself and her child.

Ellie threw the party this weekend to celebrate that new life she is building and to thank all the friends who saw her through the darkest days of her marriage and divorce. I scraped and struggled to get the money for the plane ticket, because I knew I wanted to be there. Ellie knew I was trying hard just to get there, and she reminded me that all I had to do was come; if I made it as far as her town, her home was mine and I always had a place to stay. Well, I pulled together the money for that plane ticket, and when Ellie picked me up on the other end, she jumped up and down and shrieked out my name. And I gave her a big, teary-eyed hug: the first hug we had ever given each other. Ellie and I met in an online discussion group; the two of us had shared seven years of ups and downs, but had never laid eyes on each other in our lives until this weekend.

I owe that discussion group a debt of gratitude that practically knocks me off my feet in awe, and does literally move me to tears at times, because Ellie wasn't the only soul mate I found there. You'd think surely just one deep, loving friend, who was there for you for years, at any time of the day or night, really ought to be all you could ask from life, let alone an online group. But that group gave me more, as Jay says "sisters of my heart," in the form of Jay herself and Claire. It also gave us all Kath. And that's just the folks who made it to the party!

And now, I've moved into this new blogging world and made connections I never expected at all. One of the gifts of my blogging life has been getting to know R and one of the unexpected benefits of my trip to Ellie's party was that I ended up in the same part of the country as R. So, not only did I get to run up and hug my beaming, screaming, real live group of discussion group friends, I also got to throw open the door to Ellie's house, as if it were my own, and throw my arms around a real live blogging friend.

Some of us have jokingly taken to calling ourselves, "imaginary" friends. I'm a bit too sleep deprived to fully describe the joy and the connection and the healing I experienced this weekend, but I will say that the friendships I have made over the years through various virtual spaces are (in spite of the joking references to being "imaginary") anything but virtual. And as Ellie pointed out, as a child, your imaginary friends are always your best friends anyway...

Ellie, Jay, Claire, Kath and me.
What I love about this picture is that right before it was taken, Jay said, "Oh, we have to do a hand picture!" And Claire squealed, "Yes, yes, let's do a hand picture!" Then immediately after we took the picture, Claire said, "Why did we do that?"
For the blog, Claire!