I reached 1000 followers yesterday. Steem has changed my life and I am so grateful .

I joined Steemit in August 2016. What a blessing to have found this amazing platform so early on!

I reached 1000 followers yesterday.
#1000 follower is --- @philippinetrail
I have sent the philippinetrail a gift of 5 Steem Dollars.
...

• This was my Introduction Post Last August: *
  https://steemit.com/introduction/@canadian-coconut/who-is-canadian-coconut-an-introduction
  Until recently, I built up my followers VERY SLOWLY, but the followers that I did have were the best!
  The reason is that the topic that I have posted about most frequently is very controversial.
  A lot of people disagree with what I have to say, or they just don't care to investigate my claims.
  The subject of the dangers and short-comings of vaccinations is very dear to my heart. I hate to see more lives destroyed for lack of knowledge in this area, and due to the extreme corruption surrounding it.

This picture pretty much explains my motivation to speak out. This little girl below went and gave the VaxXed Bus a big hug after she was told that all those names on the bus were people injured or killed by vaccines.

I continued posting on Steemit, and each time I slowly advanced my writing and communicating skills.
For the most part, I have been VERY IMPRESSED with how people here on Steemit have dealt with me.
I am usually open for a good debate, and the people here who have debated with me, even when they strongly disagreed, have been civil.
I respect someone who can remain civil no matter how different our conclusions may be.
There was a brief time where some of the comments were starting to get out of hand and I had one particularly awful comment made about my unvaccinated children.
It was then that I added the following to the end of each of my posts:
...
Please Comment Below and Let's Have a Productive Conversation!
I know that this is a very controversial topic ...
but if you care about children as much as I care about children...
surely we can all be civil and help each other discover the best way forward for all our children and future generations.
...
After adding that to the end of each of my vaccine-related posts, things greatly improved again and I have had no real problems.
My approach has been to assume that the person arguing with me loves children as much as I do. I assume that they are passionate and abrasive because they really believe that what I am saying is harming children. Just like I am passionate (but not abrasive) because I believe that the lies and corruption I am trying to uncover are what is harming children and humanity.

My point is ... we probably have more in common than we realize. So why insult each other and be rude?
In my experience, Steemit has people of higher caliber than other social media sites. We may come from a huge diversity of lifestyles and viewpoints, but most of the people here can think out-of-the-box and can be respectful of other people's views.
So THANK-YOU Steemit Community!
Thank-you to all my friends out there!