This moving business has been a pain in the rear end, let me tell you.
Last week I took it upon myself to mentally recall all of the magazines we are subscribed to and update their addresses. I had to mentally recall because I had, in a fit of “if it sits still, we’re throwing it out” packing craziness, tossed almost all of our old magazines. Only a few new magazines had made their way through mail forwarding to the new house, so I was left to sift through the subscriptions in my brain.
It took awhile.
Eventually I remembered that BigBrother had been receiving Highlights High Five. His reading has exploded, so I had the genius idea of moving the High Five subscription into LittleBrother’s name and gifting BigBrother with a new subscription to regular Highlights. If you’re not familiar with either magazine for kids, you should really look into one or the other. High Five is great to read to your pre-readers and fabulous for your new readers as the stories are short and easy to read. Highlights is still the mega-awesome children’s magazine that you remember from back in the day.
So, I went to the website… and woe is me, it was having some of its own tech woes that day. I don’t know if it was because I was changing names or what, but nothing worked. Frustrated after a day of magazine address changing, especially considering that some magazines don’t let you change your address online at all, I tweeted.
It wasn’t mean. I didn’t expect to hear anything and planned on taking one for the team and calling the next afternoon. But before I could do that, they tweeted me!
And then, before I could email them, someone named Hillary was DM-ing me! I laughed because she claimed to be a fan of my blog. I chalked it up to having been given some good PR talks about how to deal with angry bloggers who have taken to twitter and thanked her for her help.
But she went above and beyond taking care of the problem. She changed subscription names and addresses and comped us one of our two subscriptions since we had problems with the website. I was really, really touched by her hard work. And it was hard work. She worked at that for a long time that day, trying to figure out what went wrong and then going about the process of making it right. I was really pleased. And I said so!
But I had no idea that my customer service experience was about to get even better.
A couple of days later, I traipsed out to our new mailbox to retrieve the mail and found an envelope from Highlights. One piece of paper held all of the confirmations for changes and subscriptions and letting me know I’d be billed for the Highlights subscription. The other was a handwritten note. I won’t include everything written in it as some of it is just good PR, something you might expect.
But then, at the end of the note, well, I’ll share that…
I mentioned I’ve read your blog for awhile. My mom is also a birth mom to her firstborn. Thank you for all you do for those of us living on all sides of adoption.
I almost dropped the letter.
I cried.
It took a few days and then I emailed her to thank her, to confirm something and to ask if I could quote her in a post. She replied and graciously allowed me to use her words. She went into further detail in the email, explaining how the relinquishment of her mother’s firstborn shaped who her mother was as a person and a mother and that it shaped both she and her brother.
I cried again.
There are moments in blogging, in writing, in living an open life that catch me off guard. I should know to expect them. I should realize that people from all walks of life might come across my words and relate to them in one way or another. And I do. I’m not surprised when my mother-in-law knows what I’m doing even when I haven’t called to tell her. I’m not surprised when new local friends Google me and know more about me before I get a chance to tell them my story. But I sometimes forget how small the Internet is and how words can reach through the screen — or out of a hand-written letter — and touch your heart so deeply.
What started out as a simple project of updating our subscriptions turned into a moment of connection between myself and a reader. A moment of validation that someone out there gets it. A moment of remembering why I keep blogging even when the muck is deep. A moment of hope for my parented sons that their reality isn’t all that horrible.
Quite simply, while I was a Highlights fan before, I can say that our family will be lifelong subscribers.
