HSPers making it happen
Well-attended morning coffee social in Melbourne
Early in May, 32 people (21 with HSP and 11 family members) met for an informal get-together at the Pancake Parlour in the Fountain Gate shopping centre in Narre Warren in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. The gathering was organised by the members of the H.S.P Australian Support Group on Facebook (especially Tracy … Thank you!) and also communicated to the broader HSP community by the Foundation.
This was a fantastic opportunity to meet others with the same condition, with people attending from all different areas of Victoria, showing how valuable and needed this sort of activity is! Areas people came from included Gippsland, the Mornington Peninsula, the Western suburbs, the outer Eastern suburbs and of course some members who live close to the chosen venue. A special mention to Sharon and her friend Jo who travelled down from Newcastle in N.S.W to attend!
It was awesome that 4 of the people with H.S.P that attended were children – excellent for them to see that they are not alone on this journey and hopefully some bonding friendships were made! Also fabulous that their supportive parents allowed them to take time off school for this important opportunity and interact with others experiencing similar challenges. It was amazing that Imogen and Aleacia both turned up with cat-ear headbands on! What a coincidence!
The gathering was held in a private function room at the venue, and was overall very successful. Access was great, but unfortunately the room was not spacious for the numbers or well laid out for a gathering of this type. This made photographing the wonderful attendees all together very difficult.
This was the second meeting held in different venues in Melbourne by this Facebook group and hopefully more will be held in different locations to make it easier for people to attend. A really beneficial part was when Kate, sister of one of the Facebook group members Anna silenced individual discussions in the room and encouraged everybody to introduce themselves, say where they were from and a brief outline of their H.S.P story. It was wonderful to identify people via name, not only face and although our journeys are different in so many ways, the challenges that H.S.P presents are similar.
The get-together concluded after about four hours, feedback has been very positive and many friendships were formed. I would strongly encourage every one of you reading this to organize some sort of local get-together (can be an informal cup of coffee at an accessible venue) – we HSPers really need this support!
Photo credits: Sharon W.
Get-together over a meal in the Illawarra
On April 2, HSPers together with family and friends, 30 in all, gathered for a meal and the opportunity to socialise and share their experiences in a relaxed atmosphere at the Red Dog on the Green restaurant in Woollongong NSW.
Feedback from the organisers of this Illawarra gathering of HSPers and their families is that it was a wonderful day of sharing with each other with a big thank you to all who attended for making the effort to attend and make this special day possible.
Jason Jones, a long-standing HSP community member who had a hand in organizing the get-together was impressed with the distances some people travelled to attend – from Tamworth, Goulburn, Newcastle, Canberra, as well as from parts of Sydney and the Illawarra region.
The picture is of the HSPers at the gathering.
I attended the get together in Melbourne at Fountain Gate. I also attended one organised by Suzie about 6 months ago at Pancake Parlour at Doncaster. Both were great. The one at Fountain Gate was very large and so wonderful to meet other people with the same condition. I think it was all started by Suzie on Face Book originally and it has been tremendous. Ladies came from Newcastle and there were children attending also as mentioned by Tracy. Wonderful to meet everyone. Great idea for everyone to introduce themselves and tell their story. Hopefully we can have many more.