Four years ago, I shut the door of my office at a regional magazine and became an email address.

I still have bosses, so to speak. Women working in offices like the one I used to have, who work through lunch and slip their high heels off under their desk because 5 o’clock is creeping up but there is still much to be done. They watch for my email to come, hoping the copy I’ve written for their new ad campaign or website or press release is going to work because so many other things have gone wrong.

Sometimes I deliver. Sometimes I have a kid with a fever and the copy didn’t get written. Either way, as a freelance writer and blogger, I’m a woman on the other end of an email address. An imaginary co-worker. A mystic cowgirl of the wide, wide internet hustling jobs while in real life, I’m plugging away at a sticky laptop as my kids climb my back asking for more sliced grapes.

I am deeply grateful that my career as a writer translated easily (though not effortlessly) into a work-at-home position. The perks are that I get to do conference calls in between games of Marco Polo in our backyard pool, I can take my work with me anywhere and I am getting to write for a living. The downside is that I rarely leave my house, I never know when payday will be and it gets very, very lonely when my adult conversations are limited to business-related emails I exchange with strangers. I became a DIY and home decor blogger because I have to keep changing the look of this place to keep from losing my mind. Decorating for Mental Health should have been the name of this blog.

Seriously though, the isolation is tough and the winters can be particularly brutal. Maybe that’s why a series of work-related emails became more. Why two women began to pour out their hearts and hit send. Or maybe it’s just that at our very basic, we need someone to hear our stories because in the telling, we heal.

I first corresponded with Regina last fall, when I wrote her company an email asking to use one of their products for a tutorial. I write dozens, if not more, of similar queries and often hear nothing back so when I got her email later that week, I was thrilled. She sent me a box of supplies and I got to work…except that I didn’t finish. Everyone in the house ended up quarantined with enterovirus.

I emailed her to say that I would miss my deadline. No worries, she assured me. She’d reschedule.

But then I missed that deadline because my mom was in the hospital and I had to put my grandma in Hospice Respite Care…and I was scared. Regina told me not to think twice about it; we’d shoot for after the holidays.

The day before my next deadline, I was helping my mom make funeral arrangements. Grandma’s nurse had told us it was time. I wrote to Regina, heartbroken about the mess of my personal life but embarrassed professionally that something as simple as stenciling a wall with pretty birds in flight had fallen through the cracks of my over-burdened hands.

The thing is, when you’re an email address, there are thousands of other email addresses looking for the same opportunities as you. This opportunity, I thought, had been lost. I failed. And it was coming at a time when I had at least ten other missed deadlines and ruined professional relationships plus a home life that was revolving around sneaking away from my grandma’s death bed to nurse a six-month-old. My kids were not getting the best of me. My mom, an only child caring for her mother as a skilled nurse, wasn’t getting the best of me. My husband was becoming less man-of-my-life and more barista. I wasn’t doing any job well.

But instead of raking me across the coals, Regina was kind. She sent me emails out of the blue to ask how my family was doing. She treated me like an old friend. And then one day, she emailed me to say she’d be out for awhile. She was having a major, life-changing surgery…and she was scared.

Little by little, our emails became less about paint supplies and tutorials and more about the deep heart connection we had made. We were two women, pouring our hearts out to strangers who had turned into friends and by clicking send, bridging the gap between her office in Florida and my messy (but storied) home in Kentucky.

The last email Regina sent me ended with these words:

Just sending out a note of friendship and checking in with you. It truly feels as if you are a kindred spirit and I hope you are surrounded by love as well.

I had not written back yet before my trip to Atlanta, where I was attending the Haven Conference as a guest of Everything But the House. Eli fell asleep in my lap on the plane and in that rare quiet time, the to-do list that plagues me went through my mind. I though about messages left unanswered on Facebook, emails sitting in my draft box, the laundry I hadn’t unloaded from the dryer back home. I thought of Regina and her words. Kindred spirits. That’s what she called us. In a phase of life that often leaves me feeling like I’m not enough, someone out there saw that my brokenness with her own made something whole.

Before I became a mother, I had traveled all over Kentucky collecting kindred spirits like they were lost pieces of my life puzzle. I had discovered then that finding yourself was less about self-reflection on country roads and soul-searching in a cup of hot coffee at the counter of greasy spoon restaurant. It was the people. It was their stories. Somehow, I thought I’d lose that once I parked my car in the driveway and started a new life as a freelancing-momma. Regina taught me differently. She taught me that even through email, we crave and can find connection.

I spent Friday afternoon wandering through the vendor booths, giving my elevator speech telling what this blog is about and passing out homemade business cards. I was just about to go up to my room when I spotted a man carrying a can of paint Regina had suggested I try. I followed him. Maybe it was worth checking out, I thought.

I chatted with the man about all of the colors and finishes and uses. He took my card and before I left, he said he wanted to introduce me to someone who might be able to help me plan some upcoming projects. “Just let me get Regina,” he said.

And there she was. My kindred spirit.

We didn’t say anything. We cried and hugged a hugged that was almost a year in the making. A hug-your-neck hug that pours love deep down into your bones. The kind that makes you whole.

Friend, I want you to come here to this blog and get inspired to make your home your own. I want you to learn how to paint your ugly kitchen cabinets and rip up that horrendous carpet on the stairs not because I care much about style but because I know that these DIY projects are more than that. I know that a project gone right can strengthen you. It can be what you need to overcome, to give you control when you feel like you are spiraling. And I know that when you are lonely, a conversation and a connection can be made over a can of paint…over an internet connection. I want you to believe that your story has value and that though, like you, I am struggling to find myself in the mess that is my crazy, crazy life, I am not just an email address or an ordinary house in the suburbs. I am a real friend and I am here. I am here totally broken but maybe together, we can build something.

Much Love, Friend. So much love.