First published: April 5, 2012

I joined AMHD in March of 2007 when I was trying to remember the name of a movie I had seen as a child. I had searched endlessly through search engines to no avail. I stumbled upon AMHD and noticed that there was an entire section devoted to movies. I posted a question with a brief description and it took all of ten minutes for someone to respond and for my suffering to end. I was hooked immediately.

I was so happy to have finally found the answer to this question that had been bothering me for months that I wanted to do the same for someone else. I started finding any topic I could that I was familiar with–movies, music, pregnancy, motherhood, child rearing, etc. I worked at night and stayed home with my child during the day, so it was easy for me to pop on and off answering questions. I quickly found a niche within the pregnancy/new motherhood section and especially enjoyed helping teen mothers/mothers-to-be. I myself had been a teen mother, and wanted to provide them with the knowledge I had acquired and share my experiences. I wanted to make sure they understood every option available to them and that they made the right choices for themselves, which was something that no one had done for me. I had had to find out everything on my own.

Soon I began to see the others who were answering questions. I learned there were a lot of people who thought like me. We became a community of friends. People from different backgrounds with one common goal–to help people. Help means to ask, to answer, to learn, to educate. We talked daily, helped each other through the joys and sorrows of life. We defended each other. We didn’t always agree, there were days when we were divided, but in the end, we came back together. For over a year I spent a good portion of my days with this new “family”.

I left AMHD in 2008, not by choice, but because life called and I needed to answer. Not a day went by when I didn’t think of those individuals who had helped to form who I am. I returned to AMHD last month once life calmed down again. I had missed it too much. I quickly jumped back into a familiar routine of answering those important questions, and advising those who need help. Although some of those dear friends are now gone, many are still here, and there is a glimmer of familiarity in the new voices that have come in during my absence. I am eager to meet them all and to rekindle the friendships I had before. There really is no place anywhere on the web with the amount of caring, educated people and quality information that AMHD has flowing through its pages.