In the ever-transmogrifying world of social media, it takes a village to spread the word about anything. My blog lives because of its readers, and I appreciate every one of you. But, for the remainder of this week, I am going to thank some special people: my advocates, people who go beyond reading my blog and telling me how much they enjoy it. They share it with their friends and spread the word about it whenever and wherever they can. That I never asked any of them to be my advocate is even more humbling for me.
Kindergarten. I have to go all the way back to kindergarten to amass my first visual of Leigh Anne Wills. She was a willowy first-grader. Hair the color of a moonless night. A quizzical look with bursting smiles that crinkled her eyes at the corners. She watched our world spin without being part of it, a stance that made sense to me.
I felt it, too.
In the same small parochial school for twelve years, and we were never friends. We weren’t enemies, either. Kids tend to run with the other kids in their own grade. Still, we were alike in another respect. Both of us would probably name guys as our best friends from that era.
I followed the path prescribed for me, forgetting about Leigh Anne and waves of others from my youth. Life squeezed me through the meat grinder of disastrous decisions of my twenties and early thirties, chewed on my soul, and pounded my spirit. When I tried to work the jigsaw puzzle that was me, I had a fragmented mess to evaluate, to try to force back together. Nothing was familiar. Almost every face surrounding me was new. The centering shorthand of hailing from the same backstory, the same history, was lost to me.
Leigh Anne found me on Facebook a couple of years ago. Unbeknownst to her, I followed her sporadic commentary with the same fascination that she allotted to my hyperactive, run-on status updates. Even though she lives two hours away from me, we finally got together.
For the first time in almost a decade, I could read my shorthand again. Hers was a mirror of mine.
Leigh Anne is one of my dearest friends today. She is a gifted paralegal and tireless worker. Her children are remarkable, because she is an unrivaled mother. (Their dad is pretty great, too.) Things matter to her, and she makes eloquent, passionate cases for why they should matter to anyone without disrespecting opposing points of view.
I don’t know how many people read my scribblings today because of Leigh Anne. She asked me once, “How can I help you?” I responded with, “Oh, just share a blog post here and there to your networks when you think about it. Don’t go out of your way.”
When I launched my Facebook author page, Leigh Anne’s daughter Anna direct messaged almost every friend she had on Facebook asking them to like it. Her husband Jay shared countless posts. And, Leigh Anne chats up my blog every single solitary day to her various friends and relations. She doesn’t talk on the blog much, but she is one of my staunchest writing advocates. I only hope that I come close to being the friend to her that she is to me.
Gifts of life. Unexpected bounties. Knowing Leigh Anne is treasure to me.
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