We’ve all wondered how Emily Dickinson could write her poetry in near-complete solitude.

It’s less commonly known that even Emily sought an important reader, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and once wrote him that he was “The Friend that saved my Life.”

The two only met twice, and Higginson is said to have told others that he never met anyone “who drained my nerve power so much.”

Yet they maintained a correspondence for 25 years until her death in 1886. She sent him almost a hundred poems, with their strange punctuation and power to penetrate the heart.

Higginson was famous as a man who hated capital punishment, child labor, laws depriving women of civil rights, and slavery. Emily was a radical in her heart and mind. Higginson was radical in his speeches and published writing and even took a little action. (For more on their fascinating story, read White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by Brenda Wineapple.)

So yes, even Emily Dickinson sought one person who could understand her.

For years I resisted blogging. I had been trained to think that one should allow the public to see only highly polished work. The idea back then was that you spent years, decades, honing your craft with a small circle of confidantes before you expected public attention. After all, no one expected audiences (other than friends and family) in their apprenticeship years as a violinist, ballerina, tennis player, or singer. Those are physical skills, which makes a difference. But writing depends on insight and insight comes with the years. It is also a technical skill.

For almost a decade, I rarely sought to publish, though I did give my work to loyal, responsive and insightful friends. I was also enormously lucky to have a mother who wrote and supported my ambitions. And I hired teachers, a short story writer and a poet, to read my work and meet with me one-on-one. When I did begin to send out my work, I had some success.

I am now a blogger, and like all bloggers, I’m excited to see my stats. Sometimes I get large numbers of “views”—unheard of numbers of potential readers judged by our pre-Internet standards.

But the real joy is in the one-on-one connections that can be made. If you hire me as your writing coach or editor, I will carefully copy-edit, line-edit, critique, or brainstorm with you. I hope to give you all the benefit of the compassion, insight and expertise others have shared with me. Meanwhile, I hope you will seek your artist family in literature, in writing groups, book groups and online.

That one-on-one connection can be with yourself. In my own life, the appreciation that has most surprised me has been my own–many years later. I read my stories and poems from years ago and feel comforted by the wisdom of that child. She knew me.

And that’s when I understand how Emily was able to go so long in near-solitude.

Writing is a form of love. Self-love and love of others, and as we see in other relationships, the two intermingle. We love ourselves through our love of others. We love others through our love of ourselves.

So yes, we write to be read. You too are one of those essential readers, a Friend who can save your Life.