Honestly, in a nutshell, I have to say Twopeasinabucket.com saved me from depression by providing a community of caring, dependable, women who shared my love of scrapbooking. It has given me friends both “in real life” and “imaginary” across the country and globe.

            I found Two Peas in February of 2001 following the tragic loss of my daughter in my fifth month of pregnancy. As the mother of two boys, I was thrilled to be pregnant with a daughter. Sadly, we lost her in January 2001 at nineteen weeks pregnant due to an umbilical cord accident. I was in a downward spiral of unspoken grief. When you are pregnant and lose a baby, no one wants to talk about it. It’s easier to pretend it didn’t happen. I was desperate to find out why this had happened to me, and spent hours searching the internet on medical sites and a message board for grieving parents. What I thought would give me answers only sent me further into depression.     

            I was already a scrapbooker, and decided I wanted to document my pregnancy thoughts and grief. I then began to turn my hours of searching for medical information into time searching for items to use in my scrapbook. This is how I stumbled across Two Peas. I scoured the “Pea Soup” section for quotes and poems about babies and grief. And I found both. The gallery was overflowing with layouts that were beautifully inspiring. I began to anticipate the first o every month to see what the new garden would reveal.  I slowly started posting on the message boards and found a group of welcoming women. Instead of spending hours dissecting the last days of my pregnancy, I spent hours chatting with women about what was going on in my life, about our children and husbands, and about our jobs. On days when the emotions were too much to bear alone, they were there to lend a supportive shoulder and let me cry. Instead of spending hours grieving, I spent hours living

            But my story doesn’t end there, because Two Peas brought me a great “real life” friend. We moved to Washington in August of 2003.  I had just given birth a month earlier to our third boy. We had moved away from all friends and family for a new career for my husband. I became a stay-at -home Mom for the first time and turned to the boards at Two Peas to help ease my loneliness. I was immediately befriended by some Washington peas who were gathering together for a dinner. On that thread, I posted that I just moved to Kirkland from California. I received a peamail from Ali. She was a fellow pea who coincidentally had too just moved to Kirkland from California. We exchanged a few peamails and much to my husbands horror (he was sure I was going to meet a serial killer), I met Ali for tea and we became instant friends. We had children close in ages, we were both new to the city, and we both loved scrapbooking. You couldn’t ask for better bonding material. We got together and made cards and went to crops. We went shopping and took our children to the park. We shared dinner and fun evenings and outings with our families together. Ali and I could discuss the latest fight on the NSBR as well as what was new to shop for. We became great friends. Sadly, she moved away a couple years ago, but we still are close friends who would have never met without Two Peas.

            And of course I can’t leave this blog post without raving about my fellow “Calendar Girls.” Brought together by the Autumn Leaves daily scrap inspiration calendar, this group has grown to a true core of “sisters.” We came together as a challenge group to share our layouts inspired by the calendar, but have grown into so much more. Despite our wide range of ages and locations, and where we are in our personal lives, we share daily in the everyday happenings of our lives.  We have experienced personal struggles including births, deaths, moves, job changes, travel plans, job and school experiences within the safety net of knowing that we are there for each other no matter what.  Our threads grow long each month, bursting not only with layouts to share with each other, but in our daily chatter. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of the girls in person, and share phone calls with others. My mailbox was bursting at Christmas, my birthday and almost every other holiday with cards from my Calendar Girl friends. This group of special gals were with me from the day we brought home our foster daughter at birth in 2006, to the day we adopted her two and a half years later. I can’t imagine a better “family” of friends. Thank you Two Peas for all that you have brought to me. I can’t imagine it any other way and now am wondering who you will bring into my life next?