Dear friend, Maria J!

Dear Maria J,

First off, I want to say thank you.  I mean it.  This post is dedicated to you.  I have never met you.  I didn't even know about you until yesterday, but then I got the email notification.  It said Maria J has left a new comment on your post.  My thoughts?  Which post?  What was the comment? and Who is Maria J?  The post was about the Grand Center Theatre Crawl.  I automatically assumed that you were from St. Louis.  It did start off as a St. Louis type post (haha, I re-read it).  Next, the comment:  "Ur an amazing writer...Love to read you".  For real?  Wow!  Those comments touched me deeply and blew me away.  Who wrote them?  You did, Maria J.  You did!

See, when I first started blogging, I secretly imagined I would be famous.  People would read my blogs and it would go viral.  If I had to peel the layers into my soul, I have to think that fame is nothing more than acceptance.  We all want acceptance as human beings.  Acceptance for who we are and what we do.  I guess it makes us whole.  I have read a lot of self-improvement books and have heard the concepts of self acceptance and self love.  It's all fine and dandy.  I started my blog and somewhere in there I learned to accept my reality.  I wasn't special.  I was just another person, trying to make it in this world.  My words were written.  A lot of it became directed inward.  It was for me.  I forgot about my audience.  The fame was not coming and I had to look at the mirror and decide why I was blogging?  Was it for fame?  Not completely.  Sure.  I would have been ecstatic with that happy by-product, but I silently accepted my reality.  Maybe I have even blogged about it.

Then, yesterday happened.  You commented.  That proved to me a couple of things.  1.  Someone did read my blogs.  2.  Someone likes it.  Bam!  That was it.  That was all the fame I needed.  I had made a difference and you became my hero.  You became the angel that gave me wings.  I don't know how you found my blog, but I'm grateful that you did, from all the way in Mumbai.  I looked at your profile.  That was all I could surmise.

We look up to our super stars and sports stars as our heroes, but they are not.  The true heroes are people like you, who light up someone's life from across the ocean, with a compliment.  You made a difference.  I'm so glad you took the time to connect.  I hope you find innumerable heroes scattered on your landscape, ready to help you and as you have helped me.  Thank you for making me feel super special.

TTR