So much fills the air at the turn of the new year: grief and sorrow, longing, hope, respiratory viruses, and ritual. Horrifyingly, wildfire rages on the west coast, releasing smoke, destroying lives, leaving the gaping wound of trauma as it goes. The Earth and its people seem sick and angry. I don’t want to gloss over what many in and near Los Angeles are enduring as they piece their identities together from what is left from the fire. It’s unimaginable, and my heart goes out to those suffering for whatever good that may do.
For many of us, January is a natural reflection and inflection point where we bring a renewed awareness and intention to thought and action. Recently, the incredible women of my Nesters group went through the process of identifying words or phrase to represent what they wanted to bring into focus as the days and weeks of 2025 move forward. Listening, Remembering, renewal, and health were offered into our space. I wonder how these concepts will show up for each of them, for each of my readers, and how we can use the support of community to hold each other accountable for maintaining and cultivating intentions. What are you bringing into focus, and what makes that a priority for you right now?
As I bring my own life into focus, I have been returning to Grandpa Dubray’s five elements; they resonate so deeply with my own beliefs and perspectives. Honor, respect, humility, discipline and organization. Some of these are clearly apparent in my words and behaviors while others have been lacking. Discipline and organization are what I have considered my points of failure. There is something angry and rebellious within me that kicks against the higher self who knows how much structure is necessary to bring vision to life, to feel good in my body, and to provide a framework for self-expression. What values do you hold that conflict with one another, and what would the gray space of co-existence look like for them?
I had an enlightening conversation with a dear friend who pointed out that there are multiple ways to define “discipline” and “organization,” and that my thinking had become rigid in relation to those ideas. Discipline, we decided, could look like shedding the old narratives and beliefs that work against our wellbeing. This takes continuous and careful effort, and a large capacity for frustration as the old perspectives fight for their place in the mind. I want to let go of the mistrust of body and heart, the voice that says my body is a chore and that it is failing me. Even though my body would not remain living without my conscious and constant effort, there are places where my body does know best. Drink water, it says. Close your eyes and listen. Go outside. Maybe dance to the song that just started playing in the downstairs living room. I want to trust those impulses and follow them; let in the messages from my body and heart that hold the keys to my sense of wellness. In what ways are you trusting your body and your heart at the start of the new year?
Organization is required in deciding what to let into our lives and what to let go of, in being the gatekeeper of one’s own experience. When discipline and organization are used in this way, honor and respect emerge as a happy byproduct. All of this left me thinking about different ways of understanding one thing, how limited my vision might be in relation to the thing, and how my understanding has the power to both open worlds and slam doors shut. It takes humility to remain curious and to question what we think we know. My schema of discipline did not include bringing my awareness to interoception over and over again until recently; my perception has expanded to include guardianship of my body and mind. Organization can apply to my thoughts and emotions, following tangled up threads to get to the source. What do honor, respect, humility, discipline, and organization mean to you?
My aim is to allow for time and space to go deeper into what I think I have a solid grasp on rather than to go broader. The tree that spreads its roots further before going deeper risks collapse. For this reason, I am examining the foundation of my health, my relationship with my disability. I am about to embark on a personal journey of switching blood glucose and insulin management methods entirely in hopes of accessing improved health, so I am choosing to enter a space of conscious incompetence. I know I cannot rush this process, and that impatience for bodily energy and creative motivation will pull at me to go too quickly. I want to go deep enough to develop a clearer and brighter picture of what my boundaries are for my health and wellness, and the ways that I am choosing to honor health and wellness as lived values.
Guardianship is my word for 2025 as I work toward walling off what does not have my best interest at its core while feeding that which is sacred to me: kinship, kindness, community, wellness. Just like my attempts at meditation, I will need to tirelessly bring my focus back to the present. One very sobering fact: the first life-saving insulin injection was delivered on January 11, 1922, to a 14-year-old boy who lay dying of this disease in Toronto General Hospital. I write this on the 103rd anniversary of the technology that makes my existence today possible. A passage from poet Rebecca Lindenberg’s Spiel: A Love Poem1 reminds me that I am not alone:
I’m no nymph’s mortal beloved, nor betrayer,
but my body no longer does what it just should.
I can breathe while I sleep, but I still have to choose
to keep myself alive each day, to test, to treat
my body that no longer does what it just should.
Ondine’s lover, exhausted, simply died. At least
I have a condition I can test, treat, keep myself alive.
In Egypt, in 1552, physician Hesy-Ra noticed ants
drawn to the urine of people exhausted, dying,
Too much sugar in the blood meant death until 1922,
so when in Egypt in 1552 Hesy-Ra noticed people
with nail-polish remover breath, dry heaving
from too much sugar in the blood, death was close.
That thirst, so unslakable, anything’s like seawater,
that nail-polish remover breath, the dry heaving,
that’s ketoacidosis. You pass out, eventually, and die,
but that thirst, so unslakable anything’s like seawater,
it could make you beg for death. Low blood sugar,
the opposite of ketoacidosis, also makes you pass out
and maybe die if you don’t, as I always do, have Skittles.
Low blood sugar doesn’t make you beg for death, but
it makes you shake starting from the hands. Heartstop
maybe within minutes if you don’t, as I do, have Skittles
or orange juice, or a squeezy honey hear on hand.
I hate that shake, starting from the hands. I fear heartstop,
how fast it can come on. Maybe even while sleeping,
when you don’t know you need that squeezy honey bear.
Like Ondine’s lover, all I’d have to do to stop is nothing.
It would even happen, I say, while sleeping next to you.
You fumble then, unfastening the pump from me.
All I would have to do to stop is nothing, but then
I wouldn’t wake to see you look at me like that.
This love poem hits hard for me, and reminds me of my good fortune. I would write a love poem to friends, family, colleagues and clients that make possible my efforts to live a good life. I hope that through my presence and my work I can offer the same to them. To whom or what would you dedicate a love poem?
Lindenberg, R. (2024). Our splendid failure to do the impossible. BOA Editions.
A most thought-provoking writing…🤔 thank you for sharing your wisdom, insights and diabetes journey 💕