Navigating the daily challenges of type 1 diabetes feels like a lot, right?

From the ridiculous to the baffling to the frustrating, the physical and emotional impact of this complex chronic condition is hard to grasp, and even harder to articulate.

So how do you keep moving forward - through the highs and lows, the glucose alarms, and the extra daily decisions? How do you stay positive when it makes you feel so vulnerable?

How do you ride the good and bad diabetes waves when nobody around you ‘gets it’? 

Type 1 on 1 gets it. One big, virtual hug of a podcast episode at a time.

Jen Grieves was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1996. The ‘you’re just like everyone else’ strategy worked for a while, through the daily finger pricks and fixed injection doses. But the emotional impact of type 1 diabetes wasn’t mentioned back then, let alone discussed.

Cut to age 21… after a few tough years on a diabetes regime that wasn’t fit for purpose, Jen was diagnosed with background retinopathy.

Terrified of losing her sight, she set out to better understand her condition. But nothing she found told her what it was really like to live with type 1 diabetes as someone who wanted to say yes to life without sacrificing her health. So, she started to write it herself. That blog, about the adventures of a 20-something figuring out how to ‘do’ diabetes while also figuring out life, love, career and everything in between, connected Jen to other people living with type 1 diabetes for the first time. And for the first time she realised she wasn’t alone.

The Type 1 on 1 podcast was created in 2019 out of a desire to pass this connection onto others. Having learned to work with her body rather than against it and embracing diabetes technology with that scrappy, resilient spirit, saying yes to life has led her to work for the world’s biggest TV brands, travel the world, hike volcanoes, run a marathon (singular), move countries… all with type 1 diabetes in tow.

To date Jen has interviewed hundreds of people, sharing real stories, lived experience, empathy, imperfections, triumphs, frustrations and silliness, with an impressive tenacity for figuring it out along the way. Type 1 diabetes is full of uncertainties, but after bottling up so many stories of extraordinary ordinary lives, Jen is pretty certain about two things: that there is no normal when it comes to handling this chronic condition… and even though it doesn’t always feel like it, we are absolutely not alone.