Depending upon the day, my mood, who I’m with, the conversation, whether or not my oatmeal burned that morning, my feelings about living with diabetes vary. Some days are almost a breeze, other days I’m exhaustedly fed up with all it takes and soooooo annoyed no one really gets it.

With that, I wanted to spotlight these diabetes musings that reflect only two of the many sides of living with diabetes. One is a page from my book, “The ABCs of Loving Yourself With Diabetes,” which coaches you to more often engage your positive emotions – like kindness, forgiveness, strength, courage and appreciation – to manage your diabetes, and your life, with greater ease and happiness. It’s featured in the current newsletter from TCOYD(Taking Control of Your Diabetes.) TCOYD, headed by Dr. Steven Edelman, who has type 1 diabetes and was named Educator of the Year this year by the American Diabetes Association, brings informative and inspirational one day health fairs and conferences across the country to people with diabetes.  

Then two weeks ago, Catherine Price, a blogger over at A Sweet Life, shared her story of living with diabetes in the New York Times, “Thinking About Diabetes With Every Bite” and it was as if she was telling my own tale: The constant rigor, calculations, analysis and invisibility of living with diabetes, particularly type 1 diabetes where you must inject insulin and test blood sugars several times a day, every day, to manage it.

For me, both sitting in the positive and dealing with the sometimes grinding daily tasks co-exist – sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in parallel and sometimes at unsettling right angles depending upon the day. But always like a chronic condition they are there, the many sides of diabetes rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, expanding and contracting as we learn, move, grow, expand, collapse, relapse and press on again.