Facebook - a personal story.

Love it or hate it, Facebook has needled it's way into (some) of our worlds and has crafted itself happily as a way to keep in touch and reconnect.  Sometimes we make mistakes and accept "friends" and then eventually (when you've figured out you're never going to see them again), you un-friend them.  Guilty!  Sometimes we look enviously at friends who have 291 friends to your own 53 friends and experience a smidge of self conciousness that we don't have "enough" friends. Sometimes we feel like we need to take a Facebook break after checking for updates far too often each day (once again...guilty).  But we'd all agree that the one thing that Facebook is so valuable in doing is helping us reconnect with people from our past, and through mutual catching up 5, 10, 20 years of news, suddenly we are in each others present again.

Some people are prolific "news feeders" - and update the world on their everyday'ness (Fark, guilty AGAIN),  We offer up to our Facebook worlds a level of intimacy that  maybe you wouldn't perhaps have shared, rightly or wrongly. Sometimes I give up a lot of me on Facebook, especially as I now post my blog online (hello my lovely new readers - thanks heaps for checking in and for your encouragement!).  

Do you have any stories of reconnecting with friends or family through Facebook?

I have a doozy or two.  

My mum had three sisters, but when she died we dropped out of touch, actually we'd dropped out of touch years and years before hand.  It was just the way it was.  But a cousin found me, then another and I found one or two, and suddenly, I have reconnected with my mad, fabulous cousins.  I haven't seen one since I was.....hmmm, maybe 13, but it doesn't seem to matter, we're sort of linked by the crazy blood line of our mothers.  So in the period of 12 months, I have reconnected with some of my family that I thought I may not have been in touch with again.  And "again" is a long time.  Sure we could self analyse about why we have been lazy and not kept in contact for so many years.  But what's the point.  Now is the new start.

My mum's sister is my Facebook friend.  

Simple words I know, but when you've lost your mum, her two sisters, and there is only one aunt alive who lives on the other side of the world, and you haven't been in touch for 15-20 years, there is something so special with being connected again.  It's like she brings a little bit of mum back in my world, even just by looking at her photos and seeing my mum.  My aunt, was someone I was always proud of, as a young girl, I heard stories of her adventurous, dramatic life, of her talent, of her exoticness.  She left her very small hometown and ended up in London, living what sounded like a rich, vibrant life, she got married in a mini skirt and had a poster of Beethoven above my baby cousins bed.  She gave my cousin a fabulous name ( I bet there weren't five of her in her first year of high school - says Lisa No 3), and was an actress.  Before I was born she sent me a double decker bus from London, perhaps guided by my parents open desire for a boy - I was already named 'David".  Later when living in Canada, she sent me a toy otter.  As a child, these were two very cherished and prized possessions of mine.  I think they made me feel a little exotic as they'd come from the other side of the world.  

And now, 20 years or so on, she is back in my world, and in my Dad's world, and soon hopefully in the Sister's world.

Now how can I do anything but thank Facebook for that!

Do you have any stories of reconnecting with anyone through Facebook?

Do you search for old boyfriends names too?

Postscript:  The bus and otter above are the originals.  Nice eh.