Not For the Faint at Heart: Calling Old Timers--Your Help is Needed!!!

It can be what it was before...we just have to work at keeping it interesting.   

Hi Jeanne,

i haven't posted in a long time but I do lur****asionally. I love your idea. I promise to post more often and look in to see what's happening here. I could really use more support.

Julia

Julia,

Thanks so much and yes, let's get things going again.

When I started coming here a gazillion years ago, the board was the place to ask questions, receive honest answers and get support for this strange and new life style. It would have been so much more difficult without the OFF Family.

Lately it seems more of a social gathering to share how life is going. Not bad but still not the WLS support we once had.

We even had our own Angel to check in via phone call and see if we were okay and had questions. I learned from my Angel Judy: if food gets stuck or feels uncomfortable, lay on you left side.

I may pop in on occasion but feel odd complaining about events in my life. Happy news and WLS hints feel better to share.

I'll attempt to get in here and try to be more helpful. No promises, but I will try my best.

Annette

Sweet Annette,

Thank you so much.  I'm like you about putting too much of my day to day life on a WLS support board.  But, that's just me. 

Jeanne,

There have been many attempts at recreating what is supposed to be a WLS support board, to little or no avail. . .  while I get the social aspect here, I think this was and still is about support and before someone chimes in and says that they get support through the daily thread and while I get that to some degree, I originally came on here to learn what to expect and how to navigate the new world I'd be entering, via seeing what other people ate, what activities they did and their daily struggles.  I also stopped coming here for the very same reason of what I saw attached herein. . . nasty comments to people's posts. . .  Rather than attack another person through public flogging, I am someone who believes in treating people the way I wish to be treated and while I get that some don't understand that concept, I would and never have attacked someone the way I've seen some do here.  I have addressed situations through a PM.. . .  I've little tolerance for the back biting that sometimes goes on here.  I also feel that as one progresses through post-WLS life, they are busier and while we take detours back to the place where we came from, this for me is a touchstone of what I know works. 

I'd welcome and try to participate and offer a word of hard earned, life experience of a now long-term WLS person.  You're a good pot stirrer and provoke thoughtful, though sometimes controversial topics and I, for one, love you for it!!!

Hugs, Laureen

I agree, this board has changed so much from what it used to be.  There have been so many people who no longer post and that is ashamed because no matter what is going on in our lives it is so important to have that moral support from our peers.  I post every now and then, but I mainly lurk just to hear what others are saying.

Well, gee, let's look at this objectively:  the old timers quit posting, the board changed, and now the old timers are complaining because the board they started isn't the same.  Anyone else see the problem here?

Vickie. . . 

FYI, the "oldtimers" did not start this board. . . this board was here to support people of our age who were looking for what to expect as they embarked upon their journey and it was here I found out many things that I could not find elsewhere because the people on here were my age and got it in a way the younger folks don't.  

Jeanne spoke up about things that are true. . . so because she is not a regular, daily poster, because she must have touched a nerve somewhere, her thoughts were attacked, when in fact, she is one of the people who has come here on numerous occasions and tried to help.  So when you say, let's be objective here and you are not being objective, that is unfair and unkind and I while like you and the other posters, the facts are the facts. 

OH is a support system for WLS people.  I get that we support each other in life events, we form bonds here, that is WONDERFUL, but what about that new person seeking information, the kind that used to exist here, but that whenever someone tries (takes time from their busy lives) to recreate and goes largely unnoticed or cared about, then those people seeking, through their lurkdom, because how many people look but don't post, they are not getting the information, that I know I came here seeking six years ago.  Not everyone is brave enough to ask questions, some just lurk, obesity is a disease that makes people feel invisible and so it takes a lot for some to post.  Perhaps you've never felt like an outsider, but I know I have, most especially when I first began my journey.  And have you never been ignored?  Well when people take time to post something and it goes mostly unnoticed, it becomes a case of "why bother"?  Yet, post that my grandpa's cat died and the thread will go on for pages. . . 

The What's New thread has been here as a way to support each other in life, again, great, but the board has lost the whole purpose and meaning, which is to help newbies.

To anyone new out there reading this thread, do not be put off by this, we are simply people who sometimes disagree, this too shall pass. . .

Signed. . . an "oldtimer"