I’m so beyond thrilled, honoured and slightly terrified to say that I’ve gone and made a podcast!
Hot damn, I can’t believe I’m putting this out there…
For an embarrassingly long time I’ve wanted to get into the nitty gritty of life with type 1 diabetes and share real, human stories from the brilliant people I’ve come across in this community. The relentless, frustrating, challenging, rewarding, obscure, oh-so-entirely complex parts that present themselves every single precious day thanks to this chronic condition, and make up a hearty chunk of our extraordinarily ordinary lives. We’re all out there, existing in our little corners of the earth, individually wondering where all the hypo sweets went, where on EARTH that blood sugar reading came from, finding test strips in all manner of obscure places as we go – but never really able to sit and chew over this continually baffling quiet mayhem.
The infrequent but glorious moments in which I’ve been able to converse with people in the type 1 community in person over the years have been so delicious, so comforting, so ‘it’s ok I’m not the only one who feels like this’ that I’ve often wanted to bottle them up and replay them over and over when I’m (often) wondering, alone, what the hell I’m supposed to do next as the numbers glare and the machines beep and I pray to the diabetes powers that be for just one night of sleep that isn’t interrupted by a bloody hypo.
And so I have bottled them. Into emotional, funny, hopeful audio files for us all.
Type 1 on 1 has been cooking away – vague and abstract in my head, and then officially, out loud, to others – for so, so long, and she’s almost ready to make her way into the world as an actual thing, like a freshly baked tartlet with hopefully no hint of soggy bottom. This makes me feel entirely uncomfortable, which experience has taught me weirdly means I’m probably doing the right thing.
I’ve interviewed some truly wonderful people with heart-in-throat compelling tales covering everything you can possibly think of when it comes to handling this whopper of a condition, all with the aim (as ever) of helping you feel less weird, less frustrated and ultimately less alone about living with type 1 diabetes. Because in all the years of sharing parts of a life online, it’s become smack-you-around-the-chops evident that none of us really are alone in this.
This thing is for you, my loves. It’s a fellow pancreatically-challenged compadre that will chat to you in the car, while you’re walking the dog, cleaning the toilet, or in other glamorous places like being shoved into the armpit of a stranger on a busy train.
Type 1 on 1 launches in September, with the help of Dexcom and Ypsomed who have kindly sponsored the thing. I can’t wait for you to hear it x
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