My Story
Hi I’m Kate and I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 14 years ago. Unfortunately, learning to thrive with diabetes was not always second nature to me and is still something I struggle with. At the age of 10 years old, my t1d diagnosis killed my confidence and made me feel more alone than ever. I avoided telling anyone about what I was going through and pretended as if it did not affect me. When my mental health plummeted in college, I began to realize how much of an impact diabetes had on my mental well-being over the years. From there, it was still a long journey to confronting my fears around diabetes, understanding how it affected me in childhood, learning to change my negative mindset, forgiving my body, and so much more. To say the least, diabetes is just as much a mental struggle as it can be a physical one. That’s why I’m using my talent for art to tell the story of living with diabetes. There is nothing more powerful than community and if we're going to learn how to thrive with diabetes, we’ll need each other to lean on. Find my art on Instagram @thrivabetic and listen to the stories of other thrivabetics on my podcast, Thrivabetic: Thriving with Diabetes. Available on most major podcast apps/networks.