This article is more than 1 year old
What YAG means to me
One year ago, I entered my first YAG Teams call… and it made me see my condition in a whole new way. Living with CF comes with so many obstacles, but personally, I think one of the hardest things for a young child to understand is that you can’t go near people exactly like you because people with CF are advised not to meet. It sounds dystopian, doesn’t it? Six feet apart from the only people who will ever truly understand your health. It’s really difficult to embrace your life, health and ultimately your future when you feel so completely isolated.
In most cases, that loneliness could be fixed by meeting someone who understands how difficult it is to live with this condition. But with CF, it’s not that easy. Cross-infection gets in the way and makes our lives difficult – haunting us with promises of bacteria, infection, and hospital.
But some people know exactly how I feel every day, and they live through the same experiences as me, but until now, I didn’t know how to connect with them.
This is where YAG comes in and makes the loneliness disappear. Suddenly, I have a beautiful support network and community of young people exactly like me – and I can actually talk to them! Every meeting comes with feelings of relief and happiness. It’s something that I’m excited to talk about and share. CF is the biggest part of my life, and I’ve never had it in common with anyone before. It’s a strange and exciting feeling to finally have that.
Along with a mixture of feeling supported and listened to, I also feel incredibly proud because we use our meetings to help other people living with CF. The projects we do are all varied and interesting, and everyone works together to create something we’re all proud of. One of our previous projects was called ‘When I Grow Up’, where we got adults with CF and cool jobs to talk to us about how they followed their dreams. We wanted to inspire young children with CF to do anything their heart desires, and it was a very successful project. I also took over YAG’s Instagram account to promote the project, and it was really fun!
YAG has inspired me to look for the positives in my condition and not be afraid to complain about the negatives. I’d always put on a brave face in front of my family and friends because I was scared of stressing them out. However, YAG has lifted a weight from my shoulders, and I can laugh and let it all out. I can just be myself with no worries. After a year, it’s taught me so much about myself, my conditions and how I should take care of myself. It’s truly an honour and a pleasure to be part of it!
We’re always looking for new people to join us, so if you’re 14-25 years old and would like to get involved, drop us an email at [email protected].