One of four blessing offered by TUDiabetes.org
Community
Community can mean various things to various people. It can be one of those loose terms difficult to define easy to use. Today I start a four part series leading up to a holiday break. These four small articles, define what I believe is important about our community here on TUDiabetes.org. The first blessing I will discuss is community. The other three are bounty, friendship, and support, but enough about the series. The first blessing for the holiday season is community.
Community is defined in part by dictionary.com as follows:
“A social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually preceded by the ): the business community; the community of scholars” ("Community," 2013)’
So why is community a blessing? We find a bit of the answer in the definition, “a group sharing common characteristics” ("Community," 2013). Diabetic communities share that one essential element, a common characteristic. Of course that is diabetes. We all share the same basic truth we have difficulty regulating blood sugar or we love those who do. Imagine not knowing other diabetics? I never had that issue. I was born into a family that dealt with diabetes every day. So I already knew the trials and tribulations of being diabetic. I knew the routine, and I had the mindset. But of course technology changes and understanding evolves. So if I was at one time ahead, my beliefs about diabetes placed me behind. Over time I was out of step. To find new truths I of course relied on my doctor, but I also sought community. I found Community here at TUDiabetes.com. Shared experience is one of the true blessings of our online community.
There are other things that also are important in our community. This past week we had a long time member “Judith in Portland” return to our community after an absence. I also left the community for a bit to complete a dissertation. What I found and I believe Judith and others find is that our community is accepting of those all who come and those who leave but also return. In other words a community is not a set of walls; instead it is a set of people. In my case I dropped out for about 1 ½ years while I completed my education, certainly I touched base occasionally looked in on my page and looked at the main page, but I did so secure in the knowledge that I could come back and join the community and once again contribute. This is what Elizabeth and other will find if the join and drop out of the community. In short this makes our community rich with different thoughts, experiences and future discoveries. We are a community rich with acceptance.
Community is also learning and socialization. “Like physical communities, (in an online community) the members are drawn together by their mutual interests or the challenges they share, and the community thrives on social and intellectual interaction” (Bell, 2005, p. 68). Of course ours and almost all diabetic communities are founded with the dual goals of promoting learning and socialization. The co-founder of TUDiabetes.org 'Manny Hernandez’ has said many times before that this community was founded so that People With Diabetes (PWD) will never feel alone with this disease. The reason is of course that people with diabetes often lack learning opportunities and opportunities to socialize. Yes diabetic sites are not only about diabetes they are about PWD. The key word in my mind is the word people. People first and sometimes the outer world sees diabetes before they ever see the person. Here, in this community and others we see people first diabetes second.
Finally community blessings are also found in disagreement. Yes it is true, diabetics disagree, but that is ok. An online community is “a nonjudgmental method of discourse that makes it safe to walk away, reflect, consider how a comment is being viewed by your group mates, and then focus one's thinking or ask for clarification” (Koopman, 2010, p. 25). Community allows is to disagree, about what we have, what we are, and what we want to be. The TUDiabetes community allows and encourages us to do this. We are told that to be the best we can be we must do more than tolerate other community members we must engage, challenge, and yes agree with each other.
These are the fundamental and shared experiences that make me so thankful for this community, our TUDiabetes community, so special for me. I bet if you consider your experiences here I suspect you will always be thankful for the first blessing of our online family, the blessing of community. May community forever be part of the TUDiabetes story.
References
Bell, S. J. (2005). Creating Community Online. American Libraries, 36(4), 68-71. doi: 10.2307/25649539
Community. (2013). Retrieved from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/community
Koopman, B. L. (2010). From Socrates to Wikis: Using Online Forums to
Deepen Discussions. The Phi Delta Kappan, 92(4), 24-27. doi: 10.2307/27922482
Welcome Home Judith in Portland, we are blessed that you have returned. Thank you for all the things you have done. You made our site better and we welcome your return at whatever level of involvement you can provide.
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Rick