Finding Out Who Your Friends Really Are

I have not been blessed with great friends, until now.  At 48, I’m learning what real friendship means.  I have learned that when I need something I need to ask, because others aren’t mind readers.  I have learned that the person/people that go an extra mile for you are TRUE friends to be treasured.

I have always thought thought that in friendship, it’s better to give than receive.  That, trying to help others was the most important thing.  Never did I dream that I had to open up, that I had to get to the end of my rope and think to myself, I must beg someone to help me.  Only, I had it wrong!  I didn’t have to beg, I needed only to ask.

Karie, from the Five Fish and I have known each other a decade now.  We haven’t been close those 10 years, until about 4 years ago when we joined forces to achieve new successes and to move on from the stereotypical “mom blog” title.  And this opened my world to the gift of having a real friend.  One that listens while you cry and offers comfort, one that isn’t afraid to call you out when you’re being less than kind, one that calls just to say hi, and one that would move heaven and earth for you.

(Beware a little geekness below)

Networking Witches is 10 years old, and for most of those years I’ve had Hostgator as a host company.  One day in March my site wouldn’t work right.  People weren’t seeing the site any more and I had changed nothing.  Hostgator said I was taking up to much room on their server.  I sent emails, I waited untold hours in their chat and I even tried calling them.  After taking my money for an upgrade and my quarterly rent they said they didn’t have a plan to accommodate me any longer.  WTH!  It was weeks.

I went to Karie, who swears by Dreamhost.  I signed up and started a back up of my 3 websites, and prepare them to move.  People, let me just say right here, pick the right host to begin with because you NEVER want to go through this.  At no time was I endanger of losing all of my posts because I back up the system but it was truly a tough project.  And after fighting with Hostgator and the stress of the site being down I snapped.  I called Karie in tears, not for any other reason than pure frustration.

Karie, dropped what she was doing and for DAYS migrated my sites to their new home.  Coming up, Networking Witches was a bit wonky, and had to have some new plugins and widgets but it finally came up.  Karie, had done it.  She did it with out my help because looking in the new dashboard at Dreamhost was like trying to learn a new language to me.

So this post is to tell my readers that I’m back up and running, that friendship, true friendship, is deeper than you doing for others, it’s about allowing others to do for you, and finally it’s to let my readers know what happened.