Message in a Bottle Found 2,000 Miles Away

Many years ago when I lived in Vermont and was going through a particularly painful breakup, I woke up and decided to drive to Maine for the day with an empty bottle, notepad and pen. I was a woman on a mission.

I spent the afternoon sitting on the beach writing out all of my angry feelings I had toward the person who'd broken my heart. Just before leaving, I put the letter inside the bottle, sealed it up and threw it as hard as I could into the ocean. In doing that, I told myself that I'd released the guy from my life as well as the hurt and in that moment I allowed the healing to begin.

I'll probably never know if someone found my message because I didn't put my contact information on it, but two young girls in England received an unexpected surprise when a strange woman showed up their door with something they never expected to see again.

Five-year-old twins Lucy and Ellie Readings put messages inside empty wine bottles last summer and tossed them into the ocean. They hoped the bottles would eventually be found, but never really expected that they would.

Oh, but one was!

Quite a few months after the bottles were tossed into the ocean, Lucy's washed ashore more than 2,000 miles away in Spain's Canary Islands and was picked up by a woman walking on the beach.

The message inside asked the finder of the bottle to contact Lucy at her address in Essex, England. The woman, who happens to have a friend in Essex, decided to visit her friend and get this- while in town, stop by Lucy's house!

The girls' mother says, "There was a knock at the door, which their dad, Frank, answered, when I was out picking up the girls from dance class. I got home and Frank said we had a visitor. It was a shock but she was really sweet and had brought some donuts she had made for the girls. It was lovely and the whole evening we kept saying we could not believe what had happened. The girls were very excited but they don’t really understand how rare it is for something like this to happen."

The girls say that they hope to stay in touch with their new their long-distance pen pal.