Hello Kelley!

I want to Thank You for joining my group Blooming Late!

I took the liberty of checking out your blogs links that you have up in your profile. We have afew "foodies" here in the group as well. Your other blog with your last post in January was really raw and soething I could havevery well written from my own life although I have no idea whats going on in yours. I would like to say that at the moment my husband is dying from stage 4 lung cancer(genetic,never smoked)who I must do everythingfor and is a very hard person to live with while trying to raise our ten year old virtually by myself while I am disabled from an autoimmune nervedisease like MS except it doesn't kill you,you just have tremendous debilitating pain at times. If theres anything you would like to talk about or anything, Im here. I "get" the pain that you described in your post,what people don't usually understand is that it can be an emotional pain thats so bad it feels physical.

Anyway I wanna tell you a bit about how our group works, we are first a SUPPORT group for women writers our age because the gist of it is that by our age we NEED support in order to write,period. So you will see as much of that kind of talk as you will regular talk about writing,pretty much anything goes here except being mean to someone.

There are many wonderful women in our group from all genres and levels of writing who are a real source of support,enouragement and inspiration. I hope that you will be able to make your writing home with us!

Please when you have time let us get to know you a bit better by posting in our "To kick things off" discussion or if you don't feel like doing an extensive intro then just say Hello" on our wall on the front page.

We have just started something new here. We have launched our own group platform,we have our own group blog called "The Blooming Late Journal" which link can be found in our discussion area if you would like to write a post in and then plug your blogs and your own platform.

Then we have our own Twitter hashtag so we can talk to each other in there as well as make sure to retweet each others important links. It is #BLWriters

And best of all as of last Monday we have our own group Facebook Fanpage under Blooming Late Authors, please LIKE the page and then feel free to do your plugging there as well as put things in there that you may find useful or fun for the group to see in there.

We would like it if as time allows, you would "friend" everyone in the group in here, Facebook and Twitter so that our groups publicity potential is maximized for all the writing work we do and is seen out there on the net.

We also have a pages section to the left of the group wall where you can list your FB/Twitter handle, blog and book when it's published among other things like your birthday etc. We also have useful our PAGES and DISCUSSION areas that might be a help to your writing. You can choose to follow as many or as little Discussions as will interest and help you,we don't have any requirements on how much anyone participates but I would ask if you will set your settings in here to recieve the group emails so that you can be kept up on anything important in the group as a whole. On average I only email the entire group once a month.

And if there's anything I can personally do, I'll be happy to help with anything you may need.

I am glad you are here and welcome to YOUR group!

Samantha Stacia

Kelly, I tried to leave a comment on your blog but it wouldn't work, so I'm leaving it here.

RE- your response to prompt #4

It is exremely brave of you to even write these words down, let alone share them with the world.

My heart broke for you as I read this. Seeing a stranger in your loved ones and knowing they exist on borrowed time is a special kind of hell and I'm so sorry you're there. While I haven't been there with my children, I have been there with my parents in their drug addiction, and even with my Grandma, in the final stages of alzheimers.

I think you want what all mother's want, the best for their children. In your case, if the best can't be found in life, you are willing to let him go where peace may be found, even if it means accepting the greatest loss a mother can experience. That is the essence of a Mother's love - your love for your son.

My hopes and prayers are with you and your family,
Lanita A