Internet friendships

A few days ago someone posted a few lines of truth about how we are all starting friendships on the internet.

In 1997 I started with a WEB Tv and soon there after purchased my first REAL computer.
I wanted to sell on eBay (and did) as I had a lots of stock in my antique shop.
I was in heaven. I love gadgets, this was new and interesting. Then I needed a camera too, a scanner, a printer. Son became my computer guru and I was born again.

15 years later and in between I read WOWOWOW every morning as soon as I got up. Shared a lot with ladies of all ages. It was there that I found out that Vet husband was entitled to a pension. It eased my budget considerably. Then I found out his Alzheimer medication ($600.00 a month) I could get at the VA for a fraction. All this was news to me. The WOW ladies helped me a lot. Soon I found someone with similar ideas as mine and we became friends by email. We still are. I will never see this grand lady in Chicago and I would not be able to hear her very well on the phone (hearing loss) but almost every day we share our reactions and feelings to what is changing in our lives.

The connections are important to me, I do not drive, I never was a club joiner, my husband was my best pal. We worked together 24/7 until he started to forget.
I had no idea what the next 13 years were going to bring me. I was devastated, tired, angry, lost and I turned to writing my feelings in a blog. It helped to unload to invisible internet people. Soon I wrote articles about my experiences with a site who paid me. Unfortunately they had to close up shop.

I closed my businesses in 2001 and took care of my husband. I continued to write to some people who are still my friends. It is a routine now that I just can't be without. Having said all that which we are all experiencing on Facebook and other places, I have a friend to thank for a hatred that I carried for decades, in fact since WW2. I just hated the German people, all of them!!!I came by it by what I heard my parents and grandparents report as they had survived WW1 and were now in WW2.

One fine day in this country and now an American I said to my son:"I do not have a racist bone in my body!" He looked at me, one eyebrow raising higher than the other and said:"Mom!!!!Germans!!!!". I was shocked , I was racist after all. Me? how could that be....I thought about it for a very long time.

The light went on when I became Farm Town friends with a gal in the UK. She had a tremendous sense of humor, very kind, loved animals, good cooking BUT she was German. We wrote a little bit here and there with little and big problems. It was not long that I found out that I liked this new friend a LOT. She helped me see some problems with another eye and correct myself when I was wrong with the kids or grandkids. She was right most of the time and she was younger and had some very good ideas. It went way beyond the farm we were both playing. I very slowly learned that I was so wrong...nothing was bad or viscious in this lady's heart and soul.
Yet she was German and I woke up to the fact that it is just a name for people born in a certain place. I am Flemish, that does not mean that all the people in the Flanders are good people or bad people. I kept a whole nation accountable for what bad leaders had started. My heart became soft and my daughter was very surprised when I started to talk to German tourist in our supermarket. Told them what to see and where to eat and shook hands and hugged.

So what is the big deal , you might say. It is for me. I lost a hatred which was stuck in my psyche and this one person on the internet healed me.
If she reads this she knows who she is and I have to say an eternal thank you to you my friend.