Today I had a chance to meet a blogging friend that I came to know several years ago through her powerful words and images. She begins and ends blogs from time to time deleting posts as she changes her creative direction, but she is always constant with a wisdom that goes well beyond her physical years.

Hay short for Hayley is mother to four daughters the eldest of which is poised and ready for her teen years … a time that most mothers worry will be their undoing. It hardly seems possible that a woman who looks as young as Hay could have had time to birth the girls who are just as darling in person as they have appeared in photographs on her blog pages in the past.

Although I am eighteen years older than Hay and technically old enough to be her mother, I always, always, learn something when we communicate online and now in person like today. Mothering a new little life to adulthood is difficult and most of us just stumble our way through much of the time trying to do the best we can with what we know.

Some women seem born to be mothers and they nurture quite naturally a larger circle than the children at home who call them mom. They pass out reassuring words and alternative possibilities like cookies and juice at a blood drive and do it in a way that seems as easy and natural as breathing. Hay is one of those who can shift your focus with her own honesty and soothe a worried mind with only a word or two.

She and her husband Roger took time today to come down to Rotorua so we could get together for a little while. I so appreciate having a chance to hug and share stories in person. I have said this before and it is still true it really is wonderful and affirming when people you get to know through blogging turn out to be just as you imagined they might be in real life.