I’ve had some comments appear in my various inboxes over the past few years about how unusually positive Diabetes Outside is, by comparison.
I appreciate that very much, yet at the same time get frustrated that somehow positivity is unusual in diabetes circles.
(I’m not altogether all that more positive than anyone else I meet, either, by the way. I just don’t let negativity slow me down or give me any excuses; if you’ve been here for any time at all you’ve probably seen I have a fair number of rants!)
I am not super sure I should be writing about this particular topic, as it’s definitely one close to everyone’s heart, but I feel like I’m avoiding it if I don’t discuss it at all. Can’t have that.
It absolutely KILLS me that in a Diabetes Daily poll the other day asking people what their predominant emotion is about their diabetes and their future, the majority of people answered “fear.”
Followed by “worry.”
Together, fear and worry represented 56% of the people who answered the poll. Fifty-six percent!
This may mean I don’t sleep well tonight.
At the bottom of the poll, 3% of the respondents answered “hope” is their prevailing emotion when they think about their diabetes and their future.
Only 2% answered: acceptance, optimism, faith.
Those options didn’t even make the cutoff on the display screen! Wow.
This means that at least half of you are still in the shadow of that monster.
And you know what? If you are, I think you are selling yourself incredibly short.
Listen, I’m the last one to tell you it’s easy to accept diabetes. I’ve worked at it, and will probably continue to work at it the rest of my life. Diabetes isn’t an easy thing to do. The disease carries with it an enormous responsibility and not much of a cushion for mistakes. You don’t get to take a day away… it’s hard to even take a few hours away from calculating and figuring and planning and talking and thinking.
This is why I think acceptance is just so much easier than anything else.
Because the thing is? You stop TRYING to get away from it. You see diabetes isn’t the worst thing in the world. You don’t feel like a failure before you get up in the morning simply because you have woken up in the shadow of a monster.
Calculating and figuring and talking and planning become “self” instead of “alien”… you stop fighting and noticing you are different than someone who isn’t calculating or figuring. (Let me assure you, they’re busy doing something…something you probably don’t understand, either, just like they don’t understand your disease.)
I want you to work at accepting your life with your diabetes. Let the monster go.
You’ve got better things to do here.
Amen Amy!
Wow – powerful stuff.
Thanks Amy!