I can hardly believe that I first offered the Stepping Stone Digest way back in August 2003. Since then I have tried to ensure that Stepping Stone stays current and changes its look and feel every now and then as I feel a fresh new look is always helpful.

At the moment we are working on a new look and feel website and want to make sure that Stepping Stone follows along the same lines as the website so we may well see even more changes over the next few months.

Since 2003 there have been many changes in my personal and business life also and most of the subscribers to Stepping Stone who have been with me since the beginning know how I got through most of those challenging times. Stepping Stone is quite a personal newsletter in the sense that a lot of the content is centred around me, Linda Ockwell-Jenner. This obviously works well for the subscribers because the feedback is positive and we have new subscribers regularly, and a lot of those are referrals.

This month I wanted to share with you my story of re-connecting with my moms family; her brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands and my cousins, who I have not seen since I was a little girl. Well, apart from my now famous aunty Amy, who I write about in my book, A Life Like Mine. Aunty Amy will be 94 years young in July of this year. For whatever reason my mom really had no desire to stay in contact with my dads family and my dad appeared to feel the same about my moms family. Obviously there were some times when I remember visiting uncles, aunts and playing with my cousins, but as I grew older much of the contact ceased and, sadly, my mom and dad passed away and time moved on.

Through my aunty Amy I kept up with the news of which members of my moms family had passed away and through my brother, somewhat, which members of my dads family had passed away. I always felt a sense of disconnect, I had always wanted to be part of this big family; my mom had 3 sisters and 4 brothers and my dad the same. I had always wanted to get to know my relatives and felt sad that I knew so little about them and one by one, with age and disease they were all dying and soon my chance would be gone.

I knew that time waits for no one so when my aunty Amy informed me last year just before Christmas that another one of my mothers brothers had died, I decided I would phone his wife, my aunty. As this is beginning to look like quite a long story I think I will leave it there and continue with it in the next edition of Stepping Stone. But be prepared, there might be a few tears, and much laughter involved in reading how I was received at the end of a phone in England by my aunty.

My message for those of you out there who are reading this is that try not to leave it too late. If my story is something you can relate to, remember, someone has to make the first move. Someone has to make the first contact and no one lives forever on this earth. Make that contact now, it really is worth it!