I thought I'd do a bit of mending tonight. I have been overwhelmed by stories since my posting yesterday from people with terrible tragedies to tell. Some have been posted on the photo and I've had many more in Pmail and Email forms. Stories so heart-wrenching and grief stricken that it's both sobering and terrifying.

Tonight's posting is really for one such story - the story of a woman who I met through Pbase and who has been corresponding with me since the beginning of this year. She's someone I'll almost certainly never meet but I feel as though I'm starting to know her a bit after all this time.

She says she 'hasn't the words' and I'm so lucky to be able to express myself so I thought I'd tell her story of courage and adversity. I so hope she doesn't feel I've breached her confidence by this.

When we started to communicate, she was a wife and mother to two beautiful daughters. In the summer, her lovely girl of only sixteen, Nikiti lost her life, alongside her friend Joey in a terrible car accident. She faced that indescribable experience of opening the door to news so terrible that her life, and the lives of her family will never be the same again.

She has been brave in the extreme. She's got herself back to work and back to some sort of functioning and then this week I happen to post a broken heart at exactly the time of 'homecoming' week. Her posting on my photo tells a story of a searing pain so deep that I felt I had to try in my fumbling way to show a heart on the mend. Even if she doesn't know it that is true. She posted that message for the world to see and that tells me that however raw, however painful and however unending her grief seems, she's facing the world and telling her story. Maybe it's because she can control it by not having to utter the words from her lips or maybe it's because she had time to compose herself and her thoughts before writing it.

I know I will never forget her words.

So to her, Ed and all those who told me stories of grief - here is my symbol of hope - a heart on the mend.

Ah if only it were as simple as a needle and some thread.

As for me? i've got my feet on Cornish soil - now that is food for the soul.