I received a letter from Jennifer Garside today, she is from Greenfield, Iowa, and spoke in the plain and direct voice I have come to  often associate with people from the Midwest.

She sent me a $20 bill neatly tucked into a plain white envelope with a letter typed on a computer.  The letter was in my post office box, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816

“Your writing about community has been so inspiring,” she wrote, from Joshua Rockwood to Blue Star to the Roundhouse Cafe.”

Living in a small Iowa town, she said, the idea of community touched her. And she knows whereof she speaks.

“After my grandpa got out of the Army in World War II he started his own store, little by little adding televisions, radios, appliances,  carpet and furniture building his business into three buildings in our town. It provided a comfortable living for my grandpa and grandma and they were able to buy a farm and he was able to accomplish his lifelong goal of being a farmer, not starting until his 50’s but returning to what he felt was his roots.”

After Jennifer’s grandparents retired in the 1990’s, they sold their buildings and closed their businesses. There is no way in today’s big box store world, Jennifer wrote, “that a little mom and pop business like theirs would have survived.”

Jennifer wrote that she is not a person with a lot of money, but she likes to give “because it truly makes you feel better to give than to receive.” Projects like the gofundme effort on behalf of Lisa and Scott Carrino are her favorite, “because you feel like you are actually helping “real people” instead of it going to a “large non-profit charity where very little of your donation every actually goes to help the cause.”

I find this sentiment expressed frequently about crowdsourcing, people want to know precisely where their money is going, and they have grown somewhat wary of large charities and non-profits, they are not really sure where their money is going. They like to give to people.

Jennifer Garside has been following my blog from the beginning, she wrote, “and my favorite part of the journey is that you now have a community. I’m sure you feel it too and I know in very early blogs you always mentioned not feeling like you belonged anywhere! Now Cambridge is your community and that is a great gift. I think of how many people in this country never get to experience that feeling and so many who don’t even know what they are missing.”

This was a wise and poignant letter, it meant a great deal to me. I remember writing on my blog soon after I started it, and when I was in the midst of a powerful and debilitating breakdown and depression, that I did not feel as if I belonged anywhere. I knew almost no one in my small and remote town of West Hebron, I had isolated myself from almost everyone – my family, my neighbors, the friends I once had and lost.

I roamed my 90-acre farm, writing my books, herding the sheep with Rose, in awe of the powerful blizzards and storms that swept in and enveloped me.

it was before I met Maria, and I had lived more or less alone for six years.

My wife at the time, a very good person, loved her life in New York and had no interest in moving to the country. Our marriage was struggling by then, although neither of us wanted to admit it. I was on my hero journey, I couldn’t quite see it.

We told each other often that we loved one another so much we each wanted the other to have the life they wanted.  And so, our marriage began to wither and die. There was some truth to that, I think, but we lived apart for nearly six years, we separated and divorced after 35 years of marriage.

In a good marriage, of course, and if you are well,  you do not live 400 miles apart.

I was not well. The divorce was the most painful thing I had ever experienced, and I felt a kind of loneliness and depth of loneliness I never imagined. Until Maria appeared like an angel, and my life began anew.

That was a very hard time for me, as Jennifer sensed, and I almost did not survive it. It is remarkable to hear from someone like Jennifer, who has never written or messaged me before, and who has been following me for seven years.  And who is happy for me to find community. It is true, we have found a community in Cambridge, it is very important and I was one of those people who did not know what I was missing.

Meeting people is not easy for me, and I find my friendships and community slowly and uncertainly. But they are coming, it is happening.

I am so grateful to you, Jennifer, for sending me your hard-earned money, it was not necessary, and for offering you perspective.  I love getting letters like  yours, they let me know that words matter and my stories matter, I will think of you out there in a small town in Iowa with a cup of coffee and my blog in the morning. What a sweet thought.

I imagine you know what you are talking about when it comes to community, from your grandpa to your small Iowa town, and the big box store world we all live in. Letters are special, they take time and thought and love. Thank you.

• My Post Office Box is P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816