It's the last week of Celiac Awareness Month and I've posted a lot less than usual this month. Today, I would like to let a little secret out of the bag. While I have been quiet on my blog, I have been secretly tweeting and retweeting as
@PositiveCeliac all month long.
Back in the beginning of April, I emailed Taylor of
Gluten Away after seeing some of his positive tweets to the gluten-free community. At the time of my email,
I felt really down about our Celiac world. Taylor was one of the few people keeping his chin up and trying to encourage the community instead of complaining like many others were doing via social media. I thought we needed more of this in our world and Taylor was a great person to connect with via social media.
Note: If you don't know Taylor, meet him by reading his blog. He is a teenager who continues to blow me away with his social media presence and amazing maturity at such a young age!
Taylor and I sent a few brainstorming emails back and forth about ways to promote positivity in our community. We both shared the idea of spreading the message of celiac hope and words of encouragement via Twitter. He convinced me that #celiacpositivity was a bit long and suddenly #positiveceliac was born.
I wasn't feeling great at the end of April so I couldn't move forward with exactly what I had hoped to do during May's Celiac Awareness Month. Behind the scenes, I knew I still wanted to do something and Twitter seemed like the easiest thing to do. On April 30th, the eve of Celiac Awareness Month,
@positiveceliac was launched and the rest is history.
It has been a really exciting social media experiment to see
#PositiveCeliac grow organically this month. Taylor and many other bloggers have embraced this hashtag and have run with it amazingly. I've read stories of hope, inspiration, and healing. I've seen that the community is not full of haters, bullies, and complainers. I've been reminded that there are people doing good with their celiac diagnosis and not claiming to be unloved social outcasts to anyone who will listen. There are people that have embraced their celiac diagnosis wholeheartedly instead of throwing a pity party. They are celebrating their new and healthy gluten-free lives while living with a disease that is treated with food! My hope for the future of the gluten-free and celiac community is slowly being restored.
It's been therapeutic and fun to be behind this Twitter handle during Celiac Awareness Month. I plan to keep on tweeting and retweeting your messages of living your most
#PositiveCeliac life. Keep them coming. This campaign will continue throughout the year. A special thanks to Taylor who has been keeping the
#PositiveCeliac trend alive all month long! I couldn't have done this without him.
For those of you not on Twitter, you can read the tweets here:
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