As the Flynn-Miesle family completed our June bank holiday 10k challenge for Diabetes Ireland and with everything that is going on in the world, my head was full of so many thoughts on community, support, awareness, loss, our friends and family in Minneapolis, missing family in lockdown, as I said, lots of thoughts to share.
Community Coming Together
Even though this challenge was done virtually and in our own little 5K circles of our world, it felt like we were connected. We’ve always been spread over lots of different fundraising events so when I looked up the Fundraising page for this challenge it was very much a list of names where I knew many. There were over 250 people registered!!! All doing their challenges in different places, some without company but I never felt for one minute like I was doing it alone and realised how much being connected to a diabetes community matters.
This brings me to thought number 2.
Missing Family in Lockdown
I haven’t seen my mother, brothers, sister, nephews or niece in at least two months. They all live about an hour away and yes we are staying in touch via phone and WhatsApp video calls but I am starting to feel it. I have missed out on half of my youngest nephew's life who is now 10 months old and won’t let his aunties near him for cuddles anymore. I also wasn’t there for my brother's 40th birthday. I’m really hoping that July 20th comes quickly and that we can be there for Mister T’s 1st birthday…. even if he screams bloody murder when he sees me and deliver his older brothers 3rd birthday present from March.
Minneapolis & Black Lives Matter
I’ve been following the story of George Floyd and how he died needlessly. It’s not often that Minneapolis is in the news let alone that people I meet in Ireland have heard of it. Many of you won’t know this, but myself and my husband lived in Minneapolis for four years, my daughter was born there and it’s really the first place I had access to diabetes education. I have so many fabulous memories of this city and we still have family and friends living there. Seeing it and hearing about Minneapolis on Irish news is strange especially when what’s being reported isn’t the enormity of the situation. One of our friends lives in the neighbourhood that all this happened and I read his account of the last weekend and it really brought it home to me. We’ve seen protests like this before but they quickly became yesterday’s news. This feels different but does it feel different enough?
I don’t know how to process it: I have concern for the people we know as they feel abandoned by those who swore to protect and serve and from the sinister acts of those who pretend to be supporting the movement. But I dare to hope that the right thing will prevail, that the protests will be the thing that leads to real change. I’m trying to educate myself more about how I can be anti-racist and I know that I have a lot of work to do on myself. There are a lot of helpful posts out there if you would like to learn more about how to support the Black Lives Matter movement: I do encourage you all to search for it because as has been repeated All Lives Can’t Matter until Black Lives Matter.
Loss
In a previous post, I wrote about how my Camino Challenge was intended to be a pilgrimage of remembrance for all the people I’ve met and become friends with who are no longer with me. This coming week is the one year anniversary of the death of one of those friends who had a very big impact on me as a diabetes advocate even though we met only once in real life but stayed in touch over FaceTime. But I’m not the only one: She impacted the lives of all the people with diabetes she met. She is a loss to the world.
Diabetes Awareness
After we had completed part 1 of our two day challenge, I started to see all the photos and post from others in the diabetes community on their 10K’s, many of whom shared how they were managing their sugar levels in the heat with the exercise with many successes but a few who had to resume their challenges the next day because of crashing sugars. Sharing our lives with diabetes; the challenges and the not so nice is what awareness is.
Surprising reactions from family
Sharing my everyday life with diabetes can cause concern from some family members but this past week it brought to the fore that I have not done a good job of educating those around me. There also seemed to be some surprise around all the precautions I needed to take around exercising. I may have to share more diabetes stuff on my personal Facebook page.
That concludes a jumble of thoughts and my final one being I’m so glad to be part of the diabetes community even though it sucks to have diabetes :-D And thank you for being you!