Ilene, I read your question with interest.  Just yesterday a mother at my LLL
meeting said that she has always appreciated (and her experience has always
been) that LLL does not push anything on anybody.  We present ideas which may
be new to mothers, and say that they have been found to be helpful to many
mothers, for example.  This mother's baby just turned one, and she has taken
it all in during the past year, and has felt the acceptance of who she is at
any given time, and the respect for the fact that she makes her own best
decisions for her.  It was so good to hear her say all of this because
usually I hear negative comments from people I don't
really know about how LLL is full of  pushy zealots.

My own experience is that we plant a lot of seeds and we may never know what
comes of them.  I know my first LLL Leader never dreamed that I would ever
become a Leader, much less CLA and then ACL and she was thrilled to find out
that she had really made a difference in my life that had gone on to  make a
difference in other women's lives.  I ran into this Leader years later at a
conference and got to tell her just how much she had done for me without even
knowing it.

I really think we (LCs and Leaders and anybody) can promote breastfeeding
actively without turning people off by being calm and respectful as we do
stand up for what we believe in.  I don't think we need to water anything
down in the process.  There is a time and a place to express oneself as a
zealot, and that would
be in a meetng with like-minded people who support each other, but not to the
people we hope to attract to breastfeeding.  Just my opinion.
Paula