The Healing Hands of Strangers
Photo: © 2008 Jupiterimages Corporation
On March 25, 2008, Matt Logelin's life was turned upside down.
One day after giving birth to daughter Madeline, his wife, Liz, died of a blood clot no one knew she had. Living in Los Angeles and miles away from their families in Minnesota, Logelin turned to his blog, called matt, liz and madeline, as a way to dig himself out from underneath his grief. In short, poem-like stanzas—his writing style has been compared to e.e. cummings—Logelin candidly revealed the pain he felt after losing his young wife and the joy he felt from raising Madeline. Within days, he had tens of thousands of people reading his blog and reaching out to offer him support.
"I might have moved to Katmandu and drank every day," Logelin says. "But [my blog readers] pulled me through. What could have been a really lonely experience for me was not. I was never alone."One day after giving birth to daughter Madeline, his wife, Liz, died of a blood clot no one knew she had. Living in Los Angeles and miles away from their families in Minnesota, Logelin turned to his blog, called matt, liz and madeline, as a way to dig himself out from underneath his grief. In short, poem-like stanzas—his writing style has been compared to e.e. cummings—Logelin candidly revealed the pain he felt after losing his young wife and the joy he felt from raising Madeline. Within days, he had tens of thousands of people reading his blog and reaching out to offer him support.
With help from Facebook status updates, e-mails, public message boards and blogs, technology has become a powerful tool in helping people cope with their grief and find hope. Those who are suffering from emotional and physical pain are logging on to their computers and instantly receiving encouragement online, making their roads to recovery shorter and easier to travel in the meantime.
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