On April 24 in my Editor’s Notes, I shared thoughts from Carole, a fellow food professional who’s also a fellow writer and friend. Carole submitted stories about her mother and her dog, and I shared her experience of writing for the site and the way it helped her release pent-up feelings about two pivotal departed loved ones.

Here are some further thoughts from Carole, which were just too good not to share.

“Your site is such a great idea, I imagine many people will have epiphanies as I did. Come to think of it, it was more therapeutic than all of the psychoanalysis I’ve done!

“I was reflecting how this came about. I first saw your tweet about the featured story of the adopted girl’s first dinner with her father. I read the story (the picture of her in her little high chair sooooo precious!), but didn’t realize the site was yours—I just read the “first dinner with dad” story/post and moved on.

“Then I saw another Tweet from you about FiveMoreMinutesWith.com, which took me to the site itself, where I read all about your story and your dinner with Spencer and Bo-Bo and the emergence of the idea for the site.

“It was so charming and such a wonderful idea, I posted the info on my “Cheap” blog, which you saw and thanked me for…to which I responded and told you I was thinking about a story—vaguely assuming that I’d get to it ‘someday.’

“You responded again and encouraged me to write.

“It’s like I was getting nagged by God/TheUniverse/Karma about the site, to the point where I had to drop everything and write my stories.

“And it all started with a Tweet! Who knew?

“So yes, definitely tell people these ‘back stories.’ It will help them—as it did me—to bring it to the surface. It’s a wonderful way to use modern communication technology to do an age-old thing. Share stories and pass them on.”