i will sit up in the saddle of the storm

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from yesterday to today, i move from then to now, in an attempt to self actualize my wishes to feel more full.

with humility and strength, i will begin to redefine my definitions of the actions which are a point of self-pride, self-fufilling prophecy, and me-ness.

here i go, from here to there:

introspection – process of discovering what’s wrong with you
introspection – process of looking inward to find what makes you special and unique

reflection – the processing of guilt
reflection- the process of seeing a situation from outside yourself to more deeply understand motive, actions, and reactions
reflection – the process of healing

exercise – to do, with difficulty
exercise – to do, with intention

esotericism – communicating in a way that few will understand
esotericism – articulating the dimensions of life and self through word images and poetic prose intended to move the reader and my future self to a place of higher understanding

happy – a fleeting feeling stimulated by outside circumstance
happy – a state of being by which action precedes thought

strong – a tendency to be tough, cold, and aggressive while appearing outwardly warm and kind
strong – an ability to be open, honest, and tender

threatening – a perceived danger and cause for alarm
threatening – a pivotal opportunity to learn, change, grow, and share

awareness – a mental attention to self deficits
awareness – exercising aspects of the spirit that only being human can provide

diabetes – a disease i shouldn’t have to share my life with
diabetes – a reason to take a more active role in achieving good health for the only vessel that allows me the kind of awareness i so value and cherish

but i never saw the good side of the city

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red house

i’ve resisted ‘the darkness’ in every other way possible.

when i was in middle school, the stores that i shopped at provided more insight about me than what i said or how i spoke.
8th grade playground rule:
where your clothes come from and how they fit your body is indicative of what is inside,
of what is hidden, frightened, blooming, glowing, waiting.
you have to pick one and stay there.
and choose wisely because with your shirts and pants and short skirts comes a group of friends.
friends that are hiding, frightened, blooming, glowing, waiting
just like you.

clothes conveyed where you have been, where you are going and maybe even how you are going to get there.

clothes.

it a connection; a shared desire to find common ground without having to work too hard to get there.

something to hide behind for some, a mountain to shout from for others.

—

being at the medtronic diabetes advocates forum brought memories of dress to the front of my mind.

i was feeling all sorts of things that my business casual attire just couldn’t convey.

upon arrival, i was feeling edgy, excited, busy, overworked, stressed.
and i needed so badly to feel understood and recognized for the struggle i was doing such a great job concealing
i was all bottled up, needing approval, validation.
but i couldn’t ask for it in anyone.
because a cry for help
for me manifests itself in clothing
still

—

feeling misunderstood is what led me to look to clothing as form of expression in the first place
because, then, i didn’t know how to tell people
i’m hurting.

and i still don’t know how to share that
i’m hurting.
i’m hurting and don’t know why.
i don’t know why or where the hurt is stemming from
i can’t locate the root
because i might get burned trying
i can’t find the root
in all my searching
so i seek above the surface

then

i start mapping my circumstances to that hurt,
finding cause and effect where there is none
and self-criticising
until
the only way i feel safe expressing how i’m feeling
is through the fabric on my back and legs and arms
covering up my crisis
like i did in middle school
strong, hidden, frightened, blooming, glowing, waiting.

i wanted this post to be one of those ‘this is what i was doing’
and ‘this is what i am going to do about it now’ kind of posts, but it just didn’t end up that way

i don’t have a conclusion
or a starting point other than
to say it
candidly, nakedly, openly

i’m hurting and i don’t know why.

—

this is my cycle and every time it happens i get a little better at it. i catch it sooner, share it louder, move through it wiser.

i know a sunrise from a sunset. equally important. equally valuable. the absence of other equates to a loss of both.

move onward, my friend, onward.

aint no sunshine when she’s gone

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bathroom

attending the medtronic diabetes advocates forum came with everything you would expect: great big hunks of information, meaningful connections, the forging of new friendships, open discussion, action plans, boats of laughter, and down-right exhaustion.

coming home from the weekend, i said to my partner, jesse, “that was a lot of diabetes.”

feeling slightly bent out of shape from returning to a diabetes job after a diabetes weekend got me thinking about a conversation with chuck on the first evening about his job in global coverage with medtronic.

he candidly told me about his recent visit to japan. he said that in order for most people with diabetes to be covered for an insulin pump, they must see their doctor every month. he went on to explain that all pump supplies are funneled through the doctor’s office.

at first i was stunned by this. every month and seemingly no autonomy to order as you please? how could they live like that i wondered.

but as the conversation between him and scott e continued, my mind wandered. i wanted to ask so many more questions.

what if that much doctor time actually worked to their benefit? what if they liked seeing a care professional twelve times a year because it helped them foster better management habits? what if not having to order your own supplies, but rather JUST pick them up made it simpler?

by this point, my head was exploding.

i had to ask about metrics, about the data. was this method working? could we benefit from more covered visits IF a person would elect to have them? could management improve if the extra task of ordering supplies wasn’t in our hands as patients?

i asked chuck if pump-wearing PWDs in japan have better A1Cs. and his answer was ‘well, we don’t know.’

if my brains were not scattered about the floor already, they certainly were by now.

being a big idea person, i started conjuring up things that could happen for all people with diabetes if we only knew how this model affected management. ideas were going off in my head like bottle rockets. one after the other. i knew that cultural and lifestyle differences would make for excellent confounding factors, but i couldn’t let it stop me from dreaming.

the structure for collecting data was already there. medtronic was already there. they were in japan, making an impact, talking with patients and healthcare providers. but they were not collecting the results.

this conversation kept creeping into my mind throughout the forum and since being back home.

i know that being around diabetes more helps me remember to check more, to bolus more, to count carbs.. slower. i also know that being around people with diabetes is exhausting because it is tiring to be so much more on my diabetes game.

i can’t say if seeing my doctor more often would improve my health ‘outcomes’, or do anything other than annoy me to bits. but i can say that if i knew that evidence showed that seeing your doctor more often improved management, i would sure as hell jump on the bandwagon.

so in the spirit of asking, medtronic, please start collecting.

for all people with diabetes. lets figure out best practices and get them covered by all insurance.

we need healthy empowered people in this world

chop chop.

it just takes some time, little girl

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wordless wednesday

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Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
T. S. Eliot

jigsaw falling into place

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mirror
when i opened the email invitation to the medtronic diabetes advocates forum for 2014, i looked to mike lawson sitting next to me and said ‘did you get invited to this? maybe they meant to send it to you.’

within the diabetes space i have a lot to learn and a lot to say, but to be included in this group of strongly established advocates proved to me that i too have a strong voice and am capable of speaking for the PWDs that i am connected with online.

i went into the forum feeling young and inexperienced, but was greeted with such warmth and friendliness that my anxieties went out the window right from the get go.

meeting advocates like kim vlasnik, chris stocker, scott e., jess, jacquie, Chris, dana, catherine price, cara, scott strumello and meri, for the first time was like meeting j.k rowling. you’ve read everything they have to say and feel like you understand their creativity and heart, but have no idea about how they laugh or gesture when they speak. AND, seeing all the advocates i’ve had the great pleasure of meeting prior was the icing on the cake (sugar joke). i suppose that a thank you to medtronic is in order for that, for bringing us into one space. i hope they know just how powerful it was for us.

if you couldn’t tell from the way i opened my invite email, this was my first time at an event of the sort. i’ve been to friends for life, joslin innovation, diabetes mine innovation summit, and ADA scientific sessions, but never to a small scale gathering. and boy, was it wonderful.

not only was it wonderful to be around so many encouraging intelligent people, but it was energizing to be discussing moving forward in diabetes care and advocacy the entire time. it was three days. three days of gold; not just nuggets of great information, but truly a whole cave of wonders.

advocates who had attended events like this before mentioned that the topic of doing social good as a collective always comes up, but fails to ever gain any traction beyond the limits of the in-person event.

as you may have read already via the blogs mentioned below or by following the twitter @medtronicDAF stream, something was different this year. the air was somehow new, and filled with our shared insatiable need to create the social change we have all been yearning for.

yes, something was different.

all the pieces were in the right place, and we were collectively putting them together.

we were assembling our own diabetes advocacy puzzle of effectiveness; learning and acknowledging the special gifts that each person brings. reaching out to everyone via twitter for engagement and awareness brought an element into the room like never before. we were a room of 40 bodies and 1,000 minds. and the greatest part, medtronic was a part of it. they were not saying, ‘do your advocacy thing but push medtronic products while you do it’ they were saying ‘how can we help.’

medtronic even agreed to help write a press release for the initiative we planned in the last hour of the forum. be on the look out for the spare a rose, save a child campaign rolling around soon and please please please write a comment or DM tweet me @heathergabel if even a hair of you wants to be involved.

the experience was nothing short of astonishingly awe-inspiring. i’m so thankful to have been invited to participate.

on the last afternoon of the forum, david lee strasberg led a seminar on the art of ‘the ask’. using his method, i’d like to ask you for something…

i’m assuming that you are reading this for one of two reasons:
1. you are a personal friend/family, OR
2. you are involved in the DOC and are interested in what we did last weekend with medtronic

REGARDLESS of why you are here, i first want to say thank you. i want to thank you for your eyes and your brain and your heart. i do write this blog as a journal for personal reasons, but your support is apparent and keeps me writing when writing for myself isn’t motivating enough.

i secondly want to acknowledge that you are powerful, and that even if you haven’t participated, blogged, or tweeted in a while or even in years, you are needed and wanted. you are still a part of this community and you being alive makes it a brighter and better place.

you are a major player in the puzzle we assembled. without you, it cannot be fully complete.

here is my formal ask of you:

jump in on this one.

no matter where in life you are, you are a part of the WE because the difference between us and them can no longer exist in this space.

there is no time like the present.

move onward, my friend, onward.

Please read on if you have not yet seen other blog posts about the medtonic diabetes advocate forum 2014:

Kim Vlasnik at Texting My Pancreas
Catherine Price at A Sweet Life
Kerri Sparling at Six Until Me
Christel Aprigliano at The Perfect D
Sara Nicastro at Moments of Wonderful
Meri Schuhmacher at Our Diabetes Life
Jacquie at Typical type 1
Cara Richards at Every Day, Every hour, Every Minute
Chris Stocker at The Life of a Diabetic
Jessica Collins at Me and D
George Simmons at Ninjabetic

if you would like to hear some chatter from the friday night, listen in on this awesome podcast by chris snider called just talking podcast.

it’s all coming back to me now

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do you have a relative who sends you a little som’somthin’ every holiday?
just a small thing that sends love and says ‘i care’.
perhaps it is the same thing every year, like a holiday card, for example.
when you were little, you didn’t know it, but a tradition was being built.
every year you would get this little thing in the mail for christmas.
even into adulthood.
it becomes expected, and celebrated.
there are minor changes each year, and you always wonder what they might be.

for me, that special something ships from yelm, washington.
and aunt donna and uncle george are the masterminds.

it’s life savers.
the holiday pack of life savers.
there are about 4 packs or various flavors (my favorite is the buttered run)
inside of a pack that tells a fun holiday tale.

what is so special about the life savers is that they never stopped coming.

after being diagnosed with type 1 right after christmas,
my aunt and uncle had an entire year to decide wether or not it was an ‘appropriate’ gift to send to me

i still don’t know if they ever called my parents to ask about it, OR if it ever crossed their minds.

what i do know is that i was dreading the thought of being left out.
i was literally sweating opening up that package;
hoping with all my might that i wasn’t going to be told by my semi-distant relatives that i wasn’t allowed to live life like everyone else.
tearing back the paper slowly,
becoming more and more fearful.
i already knew my stocking wasn’t full of reese’s peanut butter cups in a big plastic candy-cane shaped container like they had been every year previous.
i already knew this year would be different than any other christmas.

but to my surprise,
the first wrapped wonder in the box had my name on it, and it was the size, shape, and weight of a life saver box.

i was ecstatic.
i got to be heather, and not heather with diabetes.
it was the most beautiful affirmation of my humanhood taking precedence over my pathology
those life savers showed me that
diabetes didn’t mean the end of tradition
certainly not one that i treasured and looked forward to every year

i started getting life savers at 6 years old.
i was diagnosed with diabetes at eleven.
this year marks 17 years of tradition
simple tradition that carries many complex emotional progressions
17 years of life saving life savers
17 gestures of love and care.

i didn’t say thank you to my aunt and uncle for making that decision
the decision to choose me first before my disease
the decision to take away one opportunity for limitation

i didn’t say thank you until this christmas.
until i realised how important it was to me every year since.

it’s now been 12 years.

i feel more like a whole person every time i see that wrapped wonder,
that life saver shaped box sitting under the tree.

it’s my breath of fresh air
my reminder to BE me first because that’s how it should be.

so merry christmas, my friends,
may your day be filled with little reminders that your personhood precedes your pathology.
it doesn’t always feel that that,
but it should
especially around the holidays.

cheers.

bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

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quote

did you imagine nsync right there?
jumping about with their hands stretched out,
their arms swinging from left to right
hands clasping like a beak
clamping and opening
clamping and opening

they are wearing expressions crafted by the feeling of being wronged.

if that is what you got, that isn’t how i meant it,
although i do like the image.

rather, i mean to say:

goodbye.

although it will not much affect my dear friends in various parts of the country, because i vow to continue writing, i would still like to say goodbye.

i will be moving from the bay area to arizona at the end of june.

love of my life, jesse, was accepted to medical school there and i have decided to accompany him for the move. we are in it for the long haul, guys.

i imagine i will write about it more as the time comes closer, but it still feels like an announcement worth making now.

so, there you have it.

i’m moving to arizona.

cheers.

i just want to fly

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bike flower

habits fade in and out, slowly. like riding your bike everyday, for example.

everyday turns into every other day.
every other day turns into every third day.
every third day turns into once a week.
then once a week fades into, ‘whoa, it’s been a while’.

anyone else have a tendency to treat diabetes like a work out regimen?
jumping from goal to goal
always starting off at full throttle,
the self promise to keep ‘going as hard as possible for as long as i can’
but like with working out, things come up.
friends to see, work to do.
there become more and more reasons why forgetting to check this morning is excusably rational.
watching each attempt slowly fade out into ‘it’s been a while’

thennnn… at some point along the ‘it’s been a while’ mode,
something in life happens that gets you thinking about your next attempt at
working out everyday
testing ten times a day
eating healthy
succeeding at paleo
blogging three times a week

there’s a spark that gets you excited about the possibility of putting your health first.
so begins again your cycle of extreme self care.

i’m writing this post because something happened that kicked my butt back onto gear.

well, two things.

first: on world diabetes day, ginger was leading a #dsma hour on twitter and she asked, “what does diabetes burnout look like?”

this was my response:

burnout

i wrote my answer SO FAST, because it was my reality right then and there. guess what i had for dinner on november 13th! if you guessed fruity pebbles, YES, you win.

i was in the thick of the ‘it’s been a while’ and i didn’t even know it until THAT moment. the DOC was present to witness the catalyst to my realization that i needed to begin a new workout.

second: mike lawson and i are attempting a new diabetes workout regimen side by side. for the first time in my life, with diabetes, there is someone holding me accountable. someone feeling like it’s too hard, too much work. i’m not alone wishing things were ‘more convieniant’.

i am not going full throttle. i’m easing into it. i already feel heaps better than before.
lighter,
happier,
more clear,
more ready for what ever is in store for me.

thank you, mike. not doing this alone is helping make it feel more manageable and incredibly more possible.

move onward, my friend, onward.

don’t tell me ’cause it hurts

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grandma's necklace

last thursday was the first thanksgiving not spent with my immediate family.

preparing for the last four or five thanksgivings have been gut-wrenching stressful and i don’t mean the cooking, nor the food shopping in crowds. i don’t mean the organizing of who sits where, nor even counting cards. i don’t mean anything diabetes related at all in fact.

what has made the approaching of the Thanksgiving holiday so terribly feels-like-a-hangover-every-day stressful has been the pull of my two families.

jesse and i have been together for over five years. my family adores jesse, and as far as i can tell, his family adores me. they both want ‘heather and jesse time’ as much as possible. that is why the asking of who i will choose to celebrate thanksgiving with each year starts around february.

until this year, i have stayed home with my mother, father, sister, grandma, aunt laura, cousin chris, aunt verna, and uncle ron. some years my aunt judy and uncle dave attend. but there has always been a core group.

if you have read my blog before, you may have seen posts about my grandma betty’s passing earlier this year.

sometime around october 30th, it hit me that the deciding factor for me staying the last three years was “this may be the last thanksgiving with grandma”.
She had been on a downward trajectory for a long while before she found the light.

realizing that seeing her could no longer sway my decision making process left a heavy weight on my heart. and boy did i carry it.

i was mad.
mad that i didn’t hold her hand and say i was thankful for her last year.

i was sad.
sad that all of her untold stories could no longer bring laughter

i was hurt.
hurt that by the time i got there, she was already gone.

i was angry.
angry that no one was asking me how i was feeling about her being gone for the first holiday since her passing.

but i didn’t tell anyone.
i kept it all in and let it fester like an infected pump site that you know is bad, but one that you don’t want to change because loose even a drop of insulin feels like a worse consequence.

and i didn’t want to feel it. i just wanted it to go away.

maybe that is why i chose to finally join jesse and his family in slc, utah.

i had an amazing time. the trip was everything thanksgiving should be. family, gaming, loving, laughing, hugging, footie pajamas, movies, shopping, pie, turkey, a real sense of togetherness, babies, and more laughing.

a new place has been made in my heart for my unrelated extended family. it is warm and filled with bo bo zo zo (don’t ask) memories.

feeling a new place emerge in there helped me be more okay with leaving the grandma shaped hole in my heart to be as it is.

logically, i know that no one person, nor group of people can fit into it. it is some very odd grandma gabel shaped space in there.

i just might have been hoping that missing her wouldn’t sting so bad if newness was around.

it still did.
i thought about her over and over.
i talked about her.
i wore her necklace.
and i missed her.

i don’t know if it gets much easier.
for my sake, i hope it does because a heavy heart is hard to bare.
for her sake, i hope that she can feel the energy and the love i am pushing her way.
for my family’s sake, i hope you can forgive me for taking what seemed like the easy road out.
i wanted to be with you. thank you for sharing me with kindness instead of guilt. i love you.
for my new unrelated extended family, thank you for opening your arms so graciously. i love you all to saturn and back. i hope to be with you again next year.

because i missed out on announcing what i am grateful for, here it is:

i am thankful for my mom, my dad, sister and near brother in law michel (too soon?). i’m thankful for my dearest jesse and our sweet pug, lancet. i’m thankful for all the family i am so lucky to have been born to, and the family i’ve been melded too post birth.

i’m thankful for my friends. hattie, paige, cait, lindsey, victor, grace, and mike, especially.

i’m thankful for my housemates, anita, lindsay, and kelly.

i’m thankful for the diabetes hands foundation, the people who work there, and the services they provide for people with diabetes.

i’m full of thanks for the air im breathing and all the privilege i’ve had in my life.

i’m thankful for diabetes because it brought me here, to the DOC. meeting all of you has been one of the greatest lucks in all my life. you life me up.

and finally, i’m thankful for my grandma and her stories and love. i’m happy to have a grandma shaped hole in there, filled with good laughs and happy moments.

and i know i’m gonna be okay

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Back Camera

there are nine drafts in my wordpress.
nine attempts at constructing something beautiful.
nine decisions to not follow through.
nine moments of overly dismissive self-editing.
nine works deemed inadmissible, unworthy, empty.
nine potential pathways to connection, lost.

okay, because i am so good at math, i know that nine times nine times nine times nine times nine times nine = a sad pity party.

that calculated sad pity party is a huge part of what i have let keep me from publishing those nine drafts hanging around in my wordpress like the small kid waiting to be picked for a basketball team.

and knowing this, aware of my own literary self sabotage, i sit… inactive.
i sit inactive until something external runs at me, ripping the passion right from my pores.
i sit inactive until the inspiration finds me.

this post is the resulting fruit of that process.
the inspiration found me
it was the DiabetesMine Innovation Summit and it was magnificent.

it helped me remember that
change begins to unfold after the uncomfortable tense conversations happen.
that good things come from bad feelings.
progress commences when corinna stands up to say “I don’t give a shit about your excuses” (more on that later).

inspired in my routine pattern, by an external entity that breaks through all the self doubt and insecurities long enough to get me thinking, i realize that those nine drafts don’t equate to a sad pity party if i decide they don’t.

there are nine drafts in my wordpress.
nine beginnings
nine opportunities to reflect on a thought i experienced once before
nine evenings spent with lancet, family and friends instead of the computer
nine reasons to reflect and revisit
nine completely incomplete feelings to explore and contemplate
nine times i got to witness that a failed attempt doesn’t equal failure

it’s wonderful what a lithe perspective can do to lift your spirits and get you to move in a new exciting direction.