Stronger Together

Today was a very long day. I knew I would be late to our lupus support group, so last night I called Valerie to start the meeting. I had to come late, she had to leave early. Perfect.

There is a theoretical end time for our group. We never observe it. People leave when they need to leave. People stay as long as they need to stay. I love this group. When only veterans show up, we do talk about lupus issues but quickly move on to "just being human" issues. When new people come to the group, everyone attends to that new person. How beautiful!

Today, we talked about how, when you are diagnosed with lupus or another chronic illness, you feel like you are plucked out of life and that everyone else is going on in some movie of healthy people that you can only observe from outside. We found common ground talking about this. Simple things like observing our experiences and talking about them make us stronger together and as a result make each of us stronger as individuals.