Message ID: 2u9pekF28n6mpU1@uni-berlin.de
My 7-year-old has had Type 1 diabetes for six years now.
This is a rough disease for a kid, and every year my family participates in a walk that raises funds for research for a cure. We ask friends and family to sponsor us in our effort to raise money to help fund research.
My best and oldest friends won't even take a dollar out of their pocket and donate to my child's fund-raising efforts. This has happened every year that we have participated. These are friends that I have known for 20 years or more. I talk with them many times each month and get together with them a few times a year. I am so hurt that they care so little that I am about to walk away from these friendships. I just can't fathom doing nothing for a friend's child.
Are these friendships worth saving?
-- Sad in Suburbia
Dear Sad:
Your friends are communicating to you through their actions. They are saying either that they aren't moved to donate to the cause of diabetic children, or that they aren't moved by the plight of your sick child. Either way, because diabetes has invaded your family, it seems that you no longer have that much in common with these friends, right?
I think you should stop asking these people for assistance, since they have made it clear that they won't give it. After you stop asking them for donations and involving them in your fund-raising efforts, you can see what is left over. If these people are warm and lively and great movie dates, their company might be a respite from the challenges of your family life. But if you feel that they simply don't care about something that resides so close to the core of your family's life, then their friendship may have become so shallow that it just isn't a friendship anymore.
Friends' failure to donate leaves empty feeling
Published October 20, 2004
It is sad that your child is a diabetic, and I am glad that fund-raising gives all of you so much joy and meaning to your lives. That said, I think that you should remember that your friends have no obligation to support you in this, and you are not entitled to any contribution from them.
They may have their own charities to support, or not. They may have very personal reasons for not doing so. However, this is not your business, and they are not obligated to share this information with you. Here's something for you to put in your pipe and smoke: instead of chucking a buck at your kid, they may be donating annually in the form of a sizeable cheque. But the fact is, and I will repeat - it is not your business, and you are in no way entitled to that information, and they are not obligated to shell out to your kid.
Let's put it this way - a charitable donation is a gift. No one is entitled to a gift. If your friendship is conditional upon whether or not your friends contribute to your favourite charity, then it is you, not they, who are shallow. Your friends are better off without you.
Childfree Abby
The ChildFree Abby Archives - http://www.dismal-light.net/childfreeabby/