I write what I know. I write what I feel. I write what I'm thinking about, what matters to me, and the things I imagine. Pretty standard for most writers. On August 22, Odyssey published this article that I wrote entitled "Just Take The Picture." It is one of my better pieces, talking about my sadness at having so few photos of my deceased father and my resolve to get over myself and just start taking pictures. It was good enough to get a lot of positive feedback, one mom reader even telling me it was a wake-up call for her. It struck a chord with several people. And a few weeks later, it was good enough for a few in the audience to feel it had been stolen.

This past Tuesday morning I woke up as usual, got the kids on the bus, and checked my phone. I had a tweet from a woman I don't know, giving me a heads-up that my article had been stolen and had gone viral on Facebook. I had actually seen the post she was referring to a few days prior and it struck me as remarkably similar, hitting every point I had made and ending on virtually the same note, with nearly the exact same words.

Perhaps you have seen the post from September 3 yourself, which has since been featured on the Huffington Post. It is a woman encouraging husbands and fathers to take photographs of his wife both before and after having kids, because someday that is all the kids will have. The woman even goes on to say in the Huffington Post article that after her dad died, she was sad at how few photos she had of him, and ended her post with the words, "Just take the photo."

Remarkably similar, wouldn't you say? Similar enough that I can absolutely see why my readers feel my content was stolen. And perhaps it was. But also, and this is important, perhaps not.

You see, there's no proof. And even if there were, what am I to do, sue? Tell this woman that she is not allowed to have the same feelings as I? To deny her the inspiration she felt from reading my article, if indeed she read it and liked it well enough to steal my words?

I have thought about this quite a lot over the last couple of days, because stealing a writer's work is a serious accusation and should not be taken lightly. I acknowledge there is a chance this woman read my article and, as one person told me, "ripped it off." But it's entirely possible that she didn't, and I still prefer to hope for the best when it comes to others no matter how often I'm disappointed. If she took my words as her own, the core idea is still valid. I would never wish for anyone to miss what I feel is an authentic and important message, regardless of whether they receive it via her Facebook post or my Odyssey article. My ego is less important than the empowerment behind the words.

If this woman read my words and they inspired her to write the post that went viral, then in truth I did my job as a writer. And frankly, if she stole my words, that is upon her soul, not mine. But it is entirely likely that she has never seen my article, has no idea who I am, and is completely clueless that she has been accused of internet plagiarism.

Here's the thing, folks: the world is a huge place. The internet is a vast ocean of the combined efforts, notions, musings, and thoughts of humanity. I have no copyright on feelings. I have no ultimate authority over ideas. I have to acknowledge that this viral post could simply be nothing more than a like-minded woman out there in the world, thinking similar thoughts and feeling similar feelings. Isn't that what we are all ultimately looking for? People we can connect with, who have trod that proverbial mile in our shoes and share similar outlooks?

And in a way, she has ended up helping me with her viral post. The same day I was alerted to the potential word-stealing shenanigans, I was contacted by an editor at Us Magazine asking for permission to repost my "Just Take The Picture" article on their website, which will be happening soon. This is a huge opportunity for me and will get my ideas out to a larger audience, where hopefully more people will get the same wake-up call as the mom I heard from before. That's all I'm really after, anyway: to build a readership and share my ideas, opinions, and words. Anything I would be viciously territorial over is nowhere in the public domain, yet. Trust me on that. Trust me, too, that I will be alert for repeats of this situation.

But for now the way I look at it, I wrote well enough for someone to steal my words. Or my idea was so on-point that someone else wrote an incredibly similar piece and it went viral. Either way, the reader wins. And any true writer crafts for exactly that.

Now, go take some pictures.