Today, I found out that a woman who blogged with The Oakland Press died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office.

I won't give her name out of respect to her family and friends.

I didn't know her very well. But I did talk to her on the phone a few times, and she attended a couple of the blog workshops I hosted. And, all day, all I've been able to picture is her face. And how alone she must have felt in that moment when she decided to pull the trigger.

As soon as I found out, I immediately looked at her blog to see if there were any signs she was contemplating suicide. Her last post was a couple days before she died and looked like it was copied and pasted from a press release.

This is the last thing she will ever put out into the world.

And it makes me feel sick. It was not her time to go.

I wish I could have told her how talented of a writer she was. I wish I could have told her how much she helped others by the words she wrote.

But I will never be able to tell her those things. No one ever will.

I'm sure it didn't cross her mind that this would affect people she barely knew. And just think, if this devastated me — an acquaintance, I cannot even imagine what those close to her are feeling.



I wish she would have known this.