Episode 134 - Solo episode: The road to acceptance with type 1 diabetes

Learning to accept and live with type 1 diabetes has not been a linear path in my experience. 29 years of life with type 1 diabetes and there are no hard and fast conclusions here, just a juicy subject to chew on for today's solo episode!

I reflect back on my own journey to discuss how I’ve come to accept living with type 1 diabetes, what that looks like, the relationship I now have with type 1 diabetes and how that’s changed at different points in my life. 

I look at the definition of acceptance as it might relate to type 1 diabetes, as well as different keys, tools and perspectives I have that have helped me equip myself for this long and bumpy ride, and in particular the fork in the road that caused me to embark on a new, quite different road to acceptance - finally allowing type 1 diabetes to travel with me in the car! Buckle up, the analogy is strong...

The inspiration for this episode was a conversation I had with Natalie Balmain on the Typecast podcast, which you can find here.

This is the definition of acceptance that I mention, from Medical professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, sourced via Psychology Today.

 “Acceptance doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean passive resignation. Quite the opposite. It takes a huge amount of fortitude and motivation to accept what is — especially when you don’t like it — and then work wisely and effectively as best you possibly can with the circumstances you find yourself in and with the resources at your disposal, both inner and outer, to mitigate, heal, redirect, and change what can be changed.”

As ever this is just my personal experience, nothing in the episode should be taken as medical advice and your first port of call for all things type 1 diabetes is your diabetes healthcare team. I hope you enjoy this one!