On my mind & heart

Today, is the anniversary of my online friend Chris's death 2 years ago ... 3 months after she gave birth to her long awaited IVF baby. I wrote a  post about her last year and shared on Mothers.

I had never met Chris in real life before she became seriously ill after a sudden stroke and brain surgery.When I first visited her in hospital she was 'unconscious' , unlikely to recover. 

 

We had wanted to meet but it was complicated because I had twin baby boys and I couldn't go far alone. Chris was pregnant, after long term  IVF , high risk with a cervix stitch and had previously delivered precious twin girls who were stillborn. She lived two hours away. Though we chatted every other day on msn and emailed. After she gave birth we spoke on the phone a few times and texted ...then nothing ! I didn't find out what happened for weeks afterwards. 

At the time I never knew ! I was sorry we hadn't had the chance to meet before. Then I went to her funeral to honour & respect my cyber friend , her husband & son. 

I now chat infrequently to her husband on msn messenger he is now sole dad raising his 2 yr son. He still uses her email and sign in name and I get a jolt every time I see him online.

So, I was saddened (even angry) to read a few posts recently about bloggers/members on internet forums who pretend to have lost a child or others that fake serious illnesses. 

I can't imagine why they would do it. 

For the 'sympathy' it appears.

I know we have a choice to take what bloggers / people write on websites as the truth or not. In reality while we may suspect that what some bloggers write may be 'embellished' to make it more dramatic, or heart wrenching or more fiction than fact, or just funnier we can't know the truth.

So we chose to believe or not. 

I first read about Carly @ Names in the sand  getting requests from people whose babies /children were alive ... selfish people who wanted her to write their living children's names and take photos . Emotional frauds who guttered Carly. 

Carly wrote Charlotte's name for me in October last year. Carly inscribes ~angel~ babies & children's names  in the sands of time at a beach in Western Australia , at sunset, then takes  a photo. Very inspiring.

 

Last week Melissa @Stirrup Queens & Sperm Place Jesters wrote a brilliant post on Emotional fraud on the Internet. Then she followed it with an update. Wikipedia even has given it a name Munchausen by Internet.

Niobe also wrote about it ...she said it leaves people feeling shocked and betrayed ...

Sherry wrote about it too.

We're forever nursing our own deep wounds, but we rally ourselves together and dig deep into our souls to offer all we do have to someone we can relate to - someone who tragically loses child after child

 That is what got to me . We may shed rivers of tears for some of these people, pray,offer up supportive comments and say thank God it isn't me - but it is all lies. Tragically ever after we wonder if another parent is for real because seeds of doubt linger a long time. 

Two years ago I discovered a woman who I suspected was faking the death or her child(children in fact) on a parenting forum.  

I started to google her and tracked her through several websites /parenting forums across the www. Even on a leukemia support forum. My Dad had leukemia and passed away after after complications of  a bone marrow transplant. Shocking, was the depth of her deceptions. 

 

She used the same unusually spelt names and the story was a little different in each place ...living in foreign country ... her little girl died of Leukemia ,12 months later a new baby was born, new baby dies of SIDs  one month later.

On another the same little girl was still alive but dying tragically before her eyes of AML (all around the same dates) , a son with autism (sometimes) , then her mother passed away (on Christmas day) on another site .
She was running out of people to die ... even her grandmother but I stopped there and never looked at that post. 

I notified the moderators of the forums involved and some deleted her posts, some didn't, one deleted mine when I questioned her. Most never even advised the victims of the emotional scam of the truth, despite the multiple links I sent to prove it.

 

I was sickened by what she wrote. She even posted links to photobucket of her alleged dead baby (while still alive) ... she had a collage of Jon Benet Ramsay on there I found .This alerted my concerns further on her emotional fraud.

Have you ever discovered a blogger or someone who turns out to be not what they say ... or suspected a story is too far out even if it doesn't involve such dreadful topics ? 

♥

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