Reflective

As you can tell, I was in an off mood yesterday and am still in one today. I probably should stay away from here, and people in general, when I'm in moods like this. It has been a long week, and it has been stressful, and it has brought back a lot of the "stuff" I had packaged up and deal with on MY terms, when I'm ready.

Anyway, I went to hte walk this morning, and when you take two small kids to a five mile fundraising walk, there is not a lot of time to deal with emotions. I suppose theres time for those later tonight.

As part of pre-walk e-mails was the one asking what Our Reason To Walk was. I wrote something, but in the midst of last week, I didn't get to send it in. I'll post it here instead:


My Reason to Walk …

I choose to walk for several reasons. I walk because I am a daughter, a wife and a mother.

I am the daughter whose mother, diagnosed as Type I when she was thirteen years old, died from complications of diabetes when she was just 47 years old. I was only 25 and had been married for just seven months. The life I had lived was the only life I knew – that of the child of a hard to maintain diabetic. No matter how hard we tried, it always seemed to be out of hand. For me, however, it was normal. I helped drive the car home when I was five because her blood sugar dropped too low. I learned how to check sugar levels and build blood sugar back up when it dropped. I knew the signs and what to look for, and how to get help. Some people say that was a lot for a kid, I say it was normal, it was all I knew. As a teenager, the once a year hospitalizations were routine, almost ordinary. As an adult and new wife, the trips to and from doctors and hospitals to help treat complications were a time for us to bond even more, to talk about this and that, to make sure that things weren’t left unsaid.

I walk as a daughter because I don’t want any one else’s child to have to do what I did, although I would do it again in a heartbeat. I don’t want anyone to ache like I did, and still do.

I am the wife, to a terrific husband, much loved and often under appreciated. I walk because I don’t want him to have to wait in hospitals, and I don’t want him to hurt the way I watched my Dad hurt for my Mom. I want my husband to have a wife to retire with and be able to live out all of our dreams and “one days”.

I walk as a wife because I don’t want anyone else’s spouse to grieve like my Dad does.

I am the mother to two terrific children, more unbelievable than I could ever imagine. I walk for them. I don’t want them to have to watch me struggle, and I don’t want that stress, the stress that the child of a diabetic faces, for them, now or ever. I walk because my Mom wished that I would never get this disease, but heaven forbid if the myth held true that it would skip a generation and get her grandkids. If it comes to be that our family gets this disease, I want the research done and the wheels in motion, so less damage is done and me, my husband or my kids have a better chance of staying healthy and living a long, complete life.

I walk as a mother because I didn’t know I could love like this.

I walk to honor my past and protect my future.

I walk because for me to do nothing would be wrong.

I walk because she loved me.