Last year as a part of Invisible Illness Awareness Week in September, with the theme 'Each One Can Reach One', bloggers writing and sharing their experiences about life with chronic pain set out to place encouraging sticky notes in public places in an effort to encourage and inform those who live with chronic invisible illness that they are not alone. It was about validating a persons pain and spreading a message of hope-anonymously. Words are so powerful, and the fact that it can only take one note to change a life moved me. 'Each One Can Reach One' but I wanted to reach more. As a blogger myself, at times, I feel as though I am writing to a brick wall. Some days and even months comments have been few and far between and I have found myself at times wondering if I am making any difference, are people even reading? I have on many occasions almost hit the delete button- but something has kept me going. There have been countless days when I have felt stuck in a dark pit feeling so discouraged and I wonder how many other bloggers are feeling like this also. It was at that moment when I was feeling so discouraged that I knew that just sitting back and waiting for people to encourage me wasn't working, neither was it going to. I needed to reach out and encourage others, and so over the past four months I have been 'spreading the sticky note love' to bloggers. I have been visiting all the blogs on chronic pain and illness I can find (there are way too many, still so many I have to visit, it's going to take me a while!) and have been leaving encouraging comments. Encouraging people living in chronic pain is something I am so passionate about especially seeing as I can relate and empathise, and I'm hopefully even turning this into a massive blog campaign shortly. While I've been leaving encouraging comments, I have been amazed at the amount of bloggers who are writing their hearts out who have received no comments (and some of these bloggers have quite a big following!) This really breaks my heart. Blogging about pain is such a brave thing to do, and when you get no comments, let me tell you- it hurts. A lot. In regards to some awesome blogs I've been following (and the ones I'm still yet to come across) I've been making an effort to make sure that bloggers have at least one comment per post. Sure, it's not possible to do all the time, but surely with the amount of followers some of the bloggers have at least one person should be reading. Maybe the lack of comments is due to the fact that people don't know what to say, but really it isn't that hard and it only takes a few seconds of your time. Find something nice to say, encourage them, tell them they are doing a great job- be creative! This is something that I have been and will continue working on doing (it can be hard to keep up sometimes)- and the encouragement that I have found just by leaving an uplifting comment has greatly enriched my life. I must say though that I've learnt to comment without expecting replies and while most people do reply there are quite a few who don't (pretty rude if you ask me). So bloggers, if you do happen to get a nice encouraging comment from me or someone else- please reply. Yes, your in pain, I get that but if you are writing lengthy blog posts than surely the least you can say is 'thankyou'. It takes courage and effort to leave an encouraging comment and to not hear back is really discouraging (I feel a blog post on blogging etiquette coming on!)- enough said. So, if you are reading this and you're a chronic pain blogger and I haven't yet stopped by your blog and left a comment (and you would like me to)- leave me your link in the comments section.