Patti, we welcome you to this Lactnet Family.  We are all different and
there is a place for all of us. We each react differently to a given
situation, some of us get heated and speak quickly, others hold back until 7
people have spoken and then say their words, some posts are written hastily
and "colorfully", while others are carefully and deliberately constructed.
Some of us speak with passion always, others just sometimes. But we all have
a role to play in our goals and there are different ways of reaching these
goals. What a boring list if we all were just alike! (Just as in a family.)
And we would be much less effective in our work if we didn't have this
diversity in approach.  There are probably few of us who haven't felt
chastised at one time or other by someone's take on our post. But
fortunately most of us got over the surprise and continue to speak in our
own way.

I've been on The List for about 1 1/4 years and one thing I have learned is
that we generally post to this list in the way we live our lives. There is
the cautious, the spontaneous, the learn-ed, the challenging, the
adventuresome, the playful, the guarded, the open, the firey, those who see
the forest and those who are tree people.

This is a list for sharing, but not everyone will like what we put out
there, and we will probably hear about it, sometimes gently sometimes not.
But if we don't take the risk of putting our thoughts and experiences out,
we will just stay where we are now.

So be of courage.  Check out the Archives and see that others have felt
offended, but came back on another day to speak again.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee
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