Be there.
The first time I stepped online was seventeen years ago, in a text-based BBS system.
From there to blogs to message boards to Twitter to Facebook, if there has been one thing I have learned about people who actively participate online, it is this.
Should someone, anyone, you know online seemingly disappear, take note and check up on them. Chances are they are fine, they are just busy with life, just overwhelmed with life and unable to post or tweet or update their status.
Sometimes, they are not. They need people to reach out, to see how they are doing, to make sure they are okay.
They may be depressed, they may be ill due to chronic illness flares, they may be ready to give up on diabetes self-care due to a string of unsavory blood glucose levels.
Be there for them. Do not ignore their absence.
This post is my February entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival. If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetessocmed.com/2012/february-dsma-blog-carnival/.
Posted on February 25, 2012, in Anxiety, Diabetes. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
Yes, I’ve attempted to contact a d-blogger who has disappeared. No luck, yet.
Thanks for this, Rachel. So agree.
Very true Rachel. I have disappeared a couple times just because of being busy and have had friends reach out to me worried about what happened. One bad thing about d-friends is sometimes we only have email addresses and if they don’t have access to their email for whatever reason, they can’t respond.
yes. just yes. i love this.
some days, knowing that i’ll have people checking on me if they don’t hear anything is all that keeps me going.
This is so true, Rachel. I know that when I start feeling depressed I scale back my on-line presence and kind of cocoon myself away – which is the worst thing to do. Thank you for reminding us that we need to observe who is quiet and check in on them!
I’m pretty good about reaching out to people – WHEN I notice. I wish I felt like I could trust my notice-er.
Thank you for writing this Rachael, although I am back this week. I have been absent for a while and it was from depression and not wanting to do anything regarding my diabetes care. I am not really one to post about things like this on my blog or twitter and I could have reached out to the community as well but, I haven’t really felt like it