Google

Using the search term "friendship blog," Fractured Friendships is the Number 1 blog on Google, Thanks for your support and interest!

Is one of your friendships getting you down? Do you have any questions I can answer? Send your queries to irene@fracturedfriendships.com/ I'll try to answer as many as I can.

In the midst of an archaeological dig amongst the piles on my messy desk this morning, I found a not-yet-used 2008 calendar from Papyrus. When I glanced at the celebrations of the year, I discovered that today is Long Lost Friend Day.

I don’t know who started it---Hallmark or Papyrus, I suspect. But it’s really a nice reminder of the warm fuzzies you feel when you reconnect with someone from your past. In the old days, before the internet, if you lost touch with a person you had to hire a private investigator but now there are so many electronic tools that make it easy to find people from your past. Admittedly, if your female friend has changed her surname, it makes the search a bit more challenging.

Want to find a long lost friend? Here are some ways to begin looking:

• Try finding the person using Google by putting her first name and last name in quotes. See what comes up. If you know the city and/or state where she lives or last lived, you can refine the search by putting that after her name in quotes.
• Check out groups from your high school or college on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.
• Search for former classmates on sites like Reunion.com or Classmates.com---or email or phone the alumni office of your school.
• Let your fingers do the walking---use the white pages directory on switchboard.com.
• No luck finding her in a directory? Are her parents or other relatives findable? Chances are they may still live in the same town she did. Try finding their phone numbers or email addresses.
• If you don’t know any relatives, you could try the friend-of-a-friend route. Do you know someone who knew her that you are still in touch with and who may be easier to find?
• Any clue to the kind of work she is doing? Perhaps, you can find her through LinkedIn, a professional association, or the human resources office of her former place of employment.

Even better than digging: If you develop a blog or personal website, your old friends may come out of the woodwork looking for you. I was so delighted to hear from some of my childhood friends who serendipitously found me.

Have any of you successfully reconnected with retro friends? Please post your stories---and I hope you will reach out and touch somebody whose friendship has been meaningful to you. Oh, Happy Long Lost Friend Day! (Any and all suggestions for de-cluttering my desk are welcome too.)

If you have a Facebook page, you’re familiar with the News Feed function that helps friends stay abreast of each other’s Facebook activities. When I saw that one of my friends had joined Journalists and Facebook, I took a look at the group and signed up too. When I saw the Friend Wheel application another friend added, I decided to do the same. And so it goes.

Each time I sign on to Facebook, I still look at what everyone is up to but I wonder whether it’s worth my time given that some of my virtual “friends” and their interests are pretty peripheral to my life...

A recent article in the Toronto Globe and Mail notes the growing number of women who are rekindling friendships from the past. One explanation for the trend: Technology is making it easier to find that best friend from high school that you haven’t heard from for ages. You can Google her; search for her on a reunion site like Reunion.com or Classmates.com; or perhaps find her on one of the popular social networking sites like My Space or Facebook...

One reason why television shows as diverse as Friends and The Golden Girls, have become classics is because they so aptly portray the essence and energy of friendships at different ages and stages of women’s lives. Based on both the subject matter and the hype, I can’t wait to watch tonight’s first episode of the mini-series, The Starter Wife---an ode to the wife who gets left—and another take on the role of female friends...