Welcome to the forum Birdie!
There are also a number of ways to navigate the site through your profile page. You can see a list the responses made to your post (question) as well as navigate to other groups, leave and check messages or notes to your friends, comment on their status...
If you want to have a private conversation, sending a message is the way to go as all other responses to a specific post are public
Spend some time on your profile page looking around or look at how others have chosen to utilize tools offered by the MH forum
Good luck to you
Well you just posted this question by clicking the green post a question link
to reply I clicked on your question and this box opened and I wrote this
Good luck and welcome
Lynn