I have a cousin. She is my only maternal cousin. She was born in 1964. Tomorrow is her birthday. She lives and works in NYC, with a second husband and their son, Alexander. She gave birth to Alexander in 2008. I have never met either the husband or Alexander. I have not talked to her since 2009. My ex husband, without asking me, told her about my suicide attempt (tomorrow is also an anniversary of that and I will go see http://www.imdb.com/showtimes/title/tt1707386 with G. to celebrate that I am still alive). What followed was a very long thread of emails and I do not have the time or inclination to go into them now, but suffice it to say is that there was a lot of conflict and uncontrolled emotion.

I have since inactivated my old GMAIL account making a copy for myself as an archive (GMAIL makes it possible), so even if she tried to contact me, I would not have known, but I have old emails. I accessed the archive today and salvaged her email address. I also found several phone numbers for her in NY, probably work, home, and cell. I viewed her LinkedIn profile and can tell that she is doing great. I sent her a LinkedIn invite and she has not responded, but I know that not everyone looks at their LinkedIn messages.

I want to say Happy Birthday tomorrow. We used to be close, many years ago. Since I do not have siblings and she is an only child as well and she and I spent summers together in our maternal grandparents' summer house, we at some point were like sisters. But long ago.

So I can call or I can write. Which is better? And what to say??