Talking at Support Groups

I went to a diabetes support group this morning to talk about the diabetic complications of nerves - diabetic neuropathy and carpal tunnel syndrome and autonomic dysfunction. It was a very nice group. There are so many support groups that aren't good. They are "pity parties". Everyone goes there for the sympathy of the others who are also suffering. When people have feelings, they want "validation". That means that there is a need for someone else to understand. "Please understand my suffering." This makes it somewhat better. The difficulty is that if everyone sits around understanding everyone's suffering, it promotes that suffering in a way. It's important to get past that, though.
The support groups also educate people. Education, of course, is always good. That part I've always liked but it can be overwhelmed by the idea that it's OK to sit around and suffer because everyone else understands.
Whatever we're experiencing doesn't exclude a positive experience. We know this from Hospice people who are "enjoying" dying. Or at least who are dying with grace. We learn how to die with purpose and meaning. This is the key, I think, to illness. So support groups need to have an awareness of this. In this case, with diabetes: "It's OK to have diabetes."
This group had a sense of that. So it was uplifting to see that. It is OK to have illness. It's a part of being human. It is our nature to become ill. So we need to find a way to be OK with that. We need to accept this as a part of our humanity. In being "philanthropists" (lover of mankind) we need to encompass all of humanity within our capacity to love. That's also a part of that "for better or worse...in sickness and in health" thing. We love the person we married even though they may be human from time to time. We fall in love with them when we see their innner divinity. That's easy. Then, when we see their humanity we have to stay in love with them - that's the real trick.
We don't really get to see our humanity as well as we do when there is illness at any other moment. So it has to be OK to have illness.