Importance of community by Emilee Kerper, MSW Social Services Coordinator
Being a part of a community is an important part of our overall health that we’ll highlight here as we prepare for a new year. You may take a moment to reflect on what your involvement in community looks like: do you have friends and family who you see regularly? Are you involved in a church or volunteer group? Do you check in with neighbors or people in your area? How do you define your community? As we enter 2023, we invite you to consider who is important to you and how you participate in their lives. We’ve seen massive shifts in the ways that people engage with one another, especially since the pandemic and huge cultural divides the last few years. We believe that focusing on our commonalities and coming together to support one another is an important part of how we further empower ourselves and those around us. We don’t need to agree on everything. We don’t even need to talk about everything. There’s a time and place for challenging conversations. Here, in our Northwest Kidney Kids community, we care about your health. We care about bringing people together to connect over improving the quality of life for our kidney kids. We see that connecting families with each other to talk about the challenges and successes that arise with kidney disease becomes a powerful outlet of support and strength for those who participate. We know meeting new people can be difficult. While you’re with other kidney kid families, there are always things in common that are not hard to find. We hear from families that it’s sometimes hard to discuss kidney disease with other families who haven’t been through this before. We hear from families about how comforting it is to meet others in our Kidney Kid community who just get it. This is why we’re creating more and more spaces for our Northwest Kidney Kid families to get to know one another and find friendship. We have more in common than we know. We are excited you’ve joined our community. Lean in, we’re here with you. We hope for 2023 to be a wonderful year for reviving our social lives, our health, and deepen the connections in our community. Reach out to Mackenzie or Emilee for more information about programs and opportunities to connect this year!
