From A Blog, A Remarkable Path To Healing
Squared for days has been hesitating to link to this (scroll down to Sunday, April 30) because it felt like it would be an imposition on a remarkable man, even though he had chosen very publicly to communicate about and start recovering from a devastating loss in his life. But it's time now to link to media blogger Terry Heaton and share the incredible way in which he chose to blog about the shocking death of his wife and his life in the days since, starting just hours after he found her during the night on the bathroom floor.
"The sense of loss that I felt that morning was overwhelmed by a fear so profound that I can't even begin to describe it," he writes in the latest of three blog posts -- this time answering those who "raised eyebrows" over his decision to quickly begin blogging of all things at such a tragic and personal time.
My whole world was torn out from beneath me, and I was scared to death. The only -- and I mean only -- place I felt safe while I was awaiting the arrival of family and friends was right here at my keyboard. If I moved even a few steps away, I began to feel suffocated and would race back. I wrote the post and I sent an e-mail, and what happened after that kept me going. Hundreds upon hundreds of people responded, and I can't tell you how important that was to me.
Gary Goldhammer on Below The Fold sums it up superbly
Many of these mourners knew Terry only through his writing. They didn’t know Terry personally, they didn’t know his wife, and they didn’t know Terry’s favorite food or football team. Yet the pain in these people’s comments seeps through the computer screen as if Terry was a blood relative. There are condolences, poems, prayers and personal reflections. There are people stripped of all pretense and puffery, commenting not out of the need to get links, but the need to share love.
Say what you want about bloggers and social media. Question blogging’s veracity and its place in the world of modern communications. But never question the power of one man with a computer and something to say to move a multitude of strangers.
Amen.