Welcome to the latest edition of Facebook Follow Friday. Each Friday there’s a tradition on Twitter called Follow Friday, and I decided to do a Facebook version here. What’s it have to do with OCD and addiction, you ask?
Mood music:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grwP8QvI1jY&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
Simple: A person in recovery needs the people around him/her to stay sober and abstinent. Most important are your family and closest friends. But the friends on Facebook can be helpful too, especially those who brighten up the wall with positive, witty, thoughtful posts. That stuff rubs off on the reader, and if that reader has fought depression, addiction, anxiety and all those other things, the mood gets a needed lift.
This week I go way back to my Revere roots and acknowledge a few faces from childhood.
Let’s get to it:
Tina Doria-Yahiaoui: As far as I can remember, Tina and I didn’t get along too well in junior high. But she was never mean, though I probably was. I did have a big chip on my shoulder back then. We reconnected sometime this year and I’m always cheered by her posts about family. She clearly loves being a mom. And as I’ve noted before, good moms are important.
Stevie Hemeon: I recently wrote about what a turd I was to Stevie back in the day, but I want to acknowledge him again because there’s something about his posts I find pretty special: The guy has a lot of health challenges these days and posts about it regularly. But he always does so with a positive spin. He maintains some cheer and never gets bitter about it. Take it from someone who had his share of health problems in the past, staying positive is exceptionally difficult. Stevie pulls it off, and that’s gotta be rubbing off on other people who need it.
Joe Nugent III: When Joe and I first reconnected on Facebook earlier this year, the first thing he did was apologize for being a punk when we were kids. I laughed, because we were all punks and I never held it against him. Grade school kids can’t be expected to be angels, especially if they’re from Revere. 😉 In junior high, Joe was actually one of the more polite, scholarly and popular kids in the building, and I remember that more than the other stuff. It turns out we’ve followed similar paths in adulthood, pursuing careers in journalism. His work appears to have rocked the boat up in Maine, and if you are a journalist who sees wrongs that need to be righted, rocking the boat is exactly the way life should be. 
Jayne Chick: Jayne was one of my schoolmates from the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines. She was always a sunny personality. On Facebook, I’m cheered by her posts about family. Like Tina, she shows her love of being a mom. She also stays positive in a world that can make that difficult at times.
Maria Cole: Maria was my third-grade teacher at the Roosevelt School. She was one of everyone’s favorite teachers at that. I absolutely love being reconnected with her and having grown-up conversations. And, by the way, if you live or work in the Wakefield, Mass. area, you should drop by her office. She’s a Reiki practitioner, which is, as she says in her profile, “a simple and holistic method of healing the body and reducing stress.” I know quite a few people who could use some of that.
Joyce Coluntino: She was my English teacher in 7th and 8th grade, and despite all the adversity that was going on in my life at the time and the bad attitude that experience gave me, she never gave up on me. I took note of that, and it boosted my morale enough to make it to high school. Her help there can’t be overstated, because back then I really didn’t care what happened to me.
That’ll do it for this week. Merry Christmas, everyone!