"And I promise I'll write back."

Dear readers, today was a first. I wrote to a newspaper columnist. But she asked for it.

There is a columnist who has a (now syndicated) piece that has run in the Lifestyle section of the Sunday paper in Nearby Medium-Sized City for years. For many years I have read her column every Sunday, and learned about as much about another person's life as you can when that person is a total stranger.

Her life took a very interesting turn several years ago when her very first novel was Noticed by someone who is Very Very Big in the talk show world. (Whose name rhymes with Poprah)

Suddenly Newspaper Columnist was thrust into the spotlight; book groups all over the world were reading her Very First Novel. It was an instant bestseller. Soon she was talking to directors, producers and famous actors about the movie version of her Very First Novel. That movie actually got made. I never saw it--I wanted to remain loyal to the book, and in my world, the movie version is never as good at the book. Other novels soon followed.

As a now-famous Author, you might expect that she would give up her little newspaper job. But she still writes the little column every week. And this week she wrote about writing back to everyone who writes to her. People (she doesn't say exactly who--her agent? her husband? her grown kids? her friends?) think she is crazy for reading and answering her e-mail. I suppose most people as Famous as she is have people who do that for them. But she writes about having found her daughter's godmother, an exercise companion, and a clergy person who will soon baptize her newborn son (her seventh child--she acquired them all through marriage, birth, adoption, or surrogacy, and some combinations thereof) through chance e-mails. She writes of having vowed this year to never miss the opportunity for human contact, even if it is electronic.

Now, this is something I can wrap my brain around! I wrote to her about my experience of having been a part of a webring, and how the common bonds that have been formed by this wonderful technology have opened up a whole new circle of friends to me.

No, I didn't tell her the name of my blog or anyone else's; I didn't feel as if I needed to invite her to know about RGBP. But I did tell her about having found people "out there" with whom I had so many things in common: women who struggle with parenting, partnering, ministry, and the balance between those things, people who struggle to remain authentic and transparent in a world that values the opaque and the facade, friends who risk reaching out and sharing the honest vulnerabilities that most people like to keep covered up and secreted away.

Will she write me back? I don't know. She said she would. But the things I wrote to her are things I wanted to say anyway. I'm glad I wrote to her, even if she doesn't write back. We'll see...