Episode 105 - Avani Ved: 'I felt like I was never going to be good enough, but stigma forced me to figure out what's important.'

When you speak to 27-year-old Avani Ved, you encounter an intelligent, focused, determined and thoughtful woman whose mission in life is to help people. She demonstrates this both in her professional career as a nurse and via her Instagram page, which spreads encouraging messages about life in general, as well as life with type 1 diabetes.
 
But her motivations come from some altogether more challenging and upsetting personal experiences as a child living with type 1 diabetes. Despite facing stigma and feelings of not being good enough since her diagnosis in 2005, Avani has somehow found the resolve to turn her pain into her power. 
 
‘When I was nine there wasn’t a lot of people in my culture that understood what type 1 diabetes was. That was a huge challenge and a huge barrier to overcome. I heard a lot of comments at nine… but at that age you’re not going to sit there and explain to a 40-year-old woman what type 1 diabetes is.’
 
Running parallel to those difficult experiences, Avani has thankfully always also had an incredible support network around her, and it’s thanks to positive interactions with medical staff in the hospital she was sent to as a little girl that Avani knew from the day of her diagnosis she was going to be a nurse - despite not knowing what being a nurse actually meant.
 
There is so much to learn from this uplifting and honest episode, and I’m grateful to Avani for sharing her story as part of her mission to, in her words, ‘become the person that I needed when I was nine years old.’