Now This Seems Weird to Me

May 13th, 2011 by Amy Gonsalves Leave a reply »

I don’t even know what I was doing when I found this on the American Diabetes Association (ADA) website.  The ADA sells wedding favors?!

Yikes.

(It’s actually a donation I think the bride and groom make to the ADA, and then they put the card on the tables instead of favors to let the guests know about the donation in lieu of favors.)

I’m all for accepting and embracing your diabetes—in fact, I think that’s the only way you can really emotionally survive with the disease, much less thrive—but wedding favors with little ADA logos or what have you seems over the top.

Full disclosure: I have an ADA keychain on my keys that says something about “stopping diabetes” by Living Well, Being Fit, and Having Fun.

But wedding favors seems to me to bring the disease into a realm in which it does not belong. 

Maybe it’s the idea that a wedding raise money for the ADA?  Is the ADA a charity that needs money?  (If they needed money so badly why is all of their promotional material printed in full color?)  Seems like the ADA has a lot of money.  A lot.  At least it looks that way from my perspective!!

I think it is really the idea that EVERYTHING be about diabetes.  I know it’s a bit hypocritical of a blogger who writes about diabetes to say it isn’t all about diabetes… but I really don’t think it is.  Nor do I think it should be!

I think it should be figuring out how to be who YOU are, with AND without diabetes.  If you have brown eyes, you had about as much control over that as you have about your type one diabetes.  So why make everything about your brown eyes?? 

I insist that people ask me how I am before they ask me how my numbers are.  I don’t routinely put my numbers on facebook, I don’t put my numbers in my blog, I don’t put them out there for others to see.  I want and need everyone to see ME, first and foremost, before anything diabetes related.  (I will put up crazy numbers and swings for my friends with diabetes because it’s the simplest and best way to portray a current struggle and garner needed support!)

It’s a choice I made and one I encourage everyone living with diabetes and everyone living with someone else living with diabetes to make as well.

I simply believe that we as individuals are bigger than our disease.  It’s a big ole huge daily pain in the patootie, but that’s kind of my point: even with how big diabetes can be, we are bigger than our diabetes.

Using a day as special as a wedding and as beautiful as a wedding table to promote a donation to the American Diabetes Association doesn’t spread that message in my world. 

Although, to also be fair, I should tell you that the tables at our wedding were named after the decks at camp.

Tiki, one of the decks at Bearskin Meadow Camp

So maybe I am a hypocrite after all!

No.  We MET at camp.  Camp was where we started the whole shebang we were celebrating as we married.

It’s what a wedding is for: celebrating the union of two PEOPLE –not raising money for a national charity.

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1 comment

  1. Gail Uphoff says:

    I can see your point about separating your identity from the disease and it is certainly something I hope my daughter grasps as she grows up as a type1. However, I do think there is a place for these possibly to honor a loved one. A wedding is also a blending of families and if perhaps a parent has died of diabetes, it might be a nice way to honor them. Also, as a guest I would be happy to see that the bride and groom spent that money on something that could possibly do some good instead of a trinket that will likely be thrown out tomorrow..

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