It's filled with fun and entertainment sure, but it's the amazing way it can bring people together, perfect strangers from all of the world can share and connect and find the support they need, all on these tangled interwebz.
It rocks.
I can think of a lot of examples, and probably will end up with countless posts along these lines over the lifetime of this blog, but here's the one that has me so very moved right now.
As I mentioned yesterday, I've been reading the blog An Acorn Dreaming, for awhile now, thanks to a post the author, Megan, had that went viral. One day last week Megan posted about a family friend, a 13 year old girl, who was going through treatment for lymphoma. The little girl's family was struggling with the medical bills and needed some help. So, I made a small donation and began reading her story on her family's blog.
She hasn't had the easiest of times, but the good news is she's 3/4 of the way through her 12 weeks of chemo and is doing well. Her type of cancer is curable and there's an 87% success rate of chemo working on it's own. Which is awesome. But here are the two things that I loved reading the most.
First, the way her family and friends have responded to this life altering news. I loved reading about the parties that took place in her hospital room and even better, the flash mob that was organized on her front lawn on her a birthday, a few days after she came home from the hospital. So cool.
But the other thing that I just loved was the response the family got when they shared their plea for help. On January 2nd they posted that they needed to raise $8,000 to cover the remaining medical costs. By the time I saw the link on the 4th they were half way there. By January 5th they had their $8,000 and a little more. And, while I'm not sure what the final statistics were, the mom shared that as of 8 pm on January 4, 59% of the donations were from people they didn't know, including donations from all over the U.S., Canada, Ireland and Surinam (gotta be honest, I don't even know where Surinam is but I think it's super cool someone there donated to a little girl here!)
I know this means so much to the family (I got a really nice thank you email from them) but it means a lot to me too, a total stranger, who stumbled upon their story and had the chance to see how much of an impact the internet can have.
Love it!
Hi, Stacy. Thank you so much for helping Phenon!! I was completely floored by the response we were able to muster with the help of the Internet. As hokey as it sounds, it just restored my faith in humanity and it was really because of people like you - complete strangers who helped out just because they could. Truly awesome.
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