If you are one of the 1.2 million people following NPR’s Scott Simon on Twitter, you are likely aware that his mother has been in intensive care for the past several days. Simon has been tweeting from her hospital room, sharing details so intimate you feel as if you’re right there with them.

Here are just a few of Simon’s bedside dispatches:

Simon is sharing his private thoughts with more than a million strangers, but for many of us, Facebook posts or Twitter updates are a way of sharing with a more immediate circle of friends. Sometimes, people display their grief independently, like photographer Angelo Merendino, who documented his wife’s battle with breast cancer via a website and Facebook page from the day of her diagnosis until she died.

In other instances it seems like the entire internet is coming together to mourn the loss of a beloved public figure such as Roger Ebert or to stand in solidarity with the victims of tragedies like the Sandy Hook shooting.

We want to hear about social media has changed your approach to facing some of life’s most challenging moments.

Have you used social media to deal with a personal tragedy? What motivates you to do so? What type of things do you post (letters, photos, diary entries, etc)? Do you feel freer to express yourself on the internet than you do in person? If so, tell us why.

Update: Scott Simon's mother died Monday night. He commemorated her with this message: