Sharing the Love (D-Blog Week, Day 7)

Today's prompt: As another Diabetes Blog Week draws to a close, let’s reflect on some of the great bloggers we’ve found this week. Give some love to three blog posts you’ve read and loved during Diabetes Blog Week, and tell us why they’re worth reading. Or share three blogs you’ve found this week that are new to you. 

I feel like this is both the easiest and hardest post to write; easiest, because there are so many amazing blogs and blog posts out there and I hardly have to do any of the work, and hardest because there are so many amazing blogs and blog posts out there, and how can I choose just a few?

The posts that really stood out to me this year are all, fittingly, for me, about memories and art.

Memories:

Kelly at Diabetesaliciousness - while I'm sure nobody needs to be introduced to this D-famous blog, I loved meeting Kelly at my very first D-Meetup, which was a huge breakthrough for me, and I love her story of a father who was willing to come to blows to protect his little girl's right to eat.

Mocha at PrettyPancreas - @PurdueMocha on Twitter - I've enjoyed our occasional conversations on Twitter, and all of the memories she recounts in this blog post are familiar ones to me (except the ketone stick one, because ironically, though I have a family member who was instrumental in developing this kind of technology, I never used them).

This incredibly moving piece at My Lazy Pancreas - one of the gems I discovered by clicking on any link I could find.

Finally, another blog I found from this week's blogroll, RainieAndMe - I love this one because it reminds me how lucky I've always been to have relatively advance diabetes technology at my fingertips (literally). That a disposable syringe was a precious gift once really opened my eyes to how far we've come in such a short time, even if we're all united in being told the cure was 5 years away from whenever we started.

Art:

I found a couple of pod poems or art pieces that I really loved; somehow, d-poetry seems more profound when written on the material we use to survive. Kudos to Death of a Pancreas and Melissa of Sweetly Voiced! Melissa (@sweetlyvoiced on Twitter) in particular has been super supportive of my work this week, and her words have raised my spirits greatly; it's always so nice to know that, when we blog, we're not shouting into the abyss.

Finally, this poem at T Minus Two struck a chord with me; a lovely way to structure a concept that resonates with most of us; how do we take the measure of ourselves?

I had a wonderful time with D-Blog Week this year and can't wait to do it again! Thanks to Karen for putting all of this together; truly, it's a movement with legs!

-Ilana