Dear Ali -

Please forgive me for not personally writing when I came across across "why won't you understand" when I was catching up on Kate's site. Still cannot believe that you were 13 or so when you wrote that. On one hand it is so beautiful, and one the other hand I never understood how much you endured, so young.

And Jo uses some understatement in her response. I would address it in greater detail were this a situation where we all really knew one and another. (Which, by the way, makes it doubly hard to loose a friend here who you've actually spent some time with in real life.)

Mike