Some of you might be surprised to learn that a woman who teaches college full-time at the age of 70 spent a decade on food stamps earlier in her life. And I make no apology for it. I got my first job at 13, worked in high school, and started paying income tax while I was still an adolescent. Not to mention sales tax and all of the other taxes and fees I've paid through the years to support our system that so often doesn't support us.
For my first five years on food stamps, I had two small children, no child support, and no college degree. That was before Bill Clinton ushered in the policies that forced women into jobs that could not begin to keep their kids from going hungry. So I could receive assistance for five years, during which time it helped my kids and me to eat. Not well, but regularly.
I don't write much about my father. He had a fatal flaw. Maybe even more than one. But it occurred to me this morning that he gave me one gift that keeps on giving -- in a good way. He was a "management analyst" (whatever that means). Not that he talked about it much. When I asked him as a child what he did when he went to work, he replied with a chuckle that he "pushed papers around."
But what I saw, week after week, month after month, until I left his house at eighteen years of age, was my father sitting at a table with his checkbook, an accounting ledger, and a little red metal bucket full of bills, addressing them one after another. He didn't explain what he doing, let alone how he was doing it, but that image is burned into my mind and it has guided me through the years in ways that never let me down when I followed the guidance.
Since writing Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!, I will pretty much talk to anybody about diabetes management any time anywhere. I don't claim to be an "expert." I'm no kind of medical professional. And there are lots of folks who have been managing diabetes quite successfully for far longer than I have.
But I have learned a few things through the years since I was diagnosed in February of 2008. And the process of spending an entire summer wading through my memories and writing it all down helped me to organize what I've learned into areas I think are the most obvious (like weight loss) or easiest to implement (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator) or even more crucial to saving one's life (like not giving up as if there is no hope when your life isn't over ~ it may have just begun).
The past couple of weeks have been an adventure. As I told you in my last blog post, I left for Cuba on May 24th to plan a conference there for 2017. That would have been adventure enough, needless to say. I hoped that I would have time before I got on the plane to schedule a post for last Sunday, but that didn't happen.
So I told myself that I'd jump right on the internet as soon as I was state-side again on June 1st to make up for leaving you hanging. But by the time I got back, I was so wiped out physically, psychologically, and emotionally, that didn't happen either.
