Diabetes! The one word in the english dictionary I never really wanted to focus on. I can remember the day I was introduced to the word by my high school girlfriend. She wore a medical bracelet around her wrist and ate sugar free candy. She told me it wasn’t much fun having it, but little else. It wasn’t until my own diagnosis, thirty years later that I understood the gravity of the burden she carried. Living with diabetes isn’t like living with a slightly annoying flatmate. It’s a 24/7 alarm bell that never stops ringing.
After diagnosis I tried to ignore it, big mistake! For me ignorance has meant nerve damage and digestive issues that don’t abate. But I’m not bitter. I’m grateful.
This month is #DiabetesAwarenessMonth. I’ll be posting every day sharing how yoga and mindset has helped me to navigate this journey. I’m not sure how I’ll fare, it’s a big task but I’m going to give it a shot (no pun intended).
So why should everybody know about Diabetes?
Well for starters 425 million people worldwide have the condition. That’s a lot of people. And that’s not counting those with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed type 1 and type 2. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing epidemics in the world. It’s also a disease with no known cause or cure and with ridiculously high priced medication in a country, like the US. Managing diabetes also has no set treatment rules. I.e Insulin is not a cure! It’s like managing Jello. There’s a whole lotta wobbling going on.
Lately I haven’t been waving my diabetes flag here on the blog or elsewhere. For personal reasons I needed to jump off the bandwagon for a while. I worked pretty hard for most of the year on getting my numbers in range. For non diabetes friends, that means I’ve worked towards having normal in range blood glucose levels. When I achieved my goal halfway through the year I took a writing break. It’s been a good exercise for me in looking at the topics which really matter to me. It’s also given me a chance to step back from all things diabetes and just be.
Whether you know about diabetes, live with diabetes or know absolutely nada being is seriously cool. Being means being okay with the ups and downs. Being is all about taking each day as it comes. Without doing anything being is always happening anyway. So being conscious of being takes it to a whole new level.
After quite a lot of being…I’m feeling like doing again…Phew!
I hope you’ll join me this month here and on my social media channels. Do comment below if you’d like me to post about something specific like what postures I choose to do, what I eat to manage my levels or anything else.
See you tomorrow!
with great respect
