Camp Kudzu 2011 - Part 4: Pride

There is something truly amazing that goes on at camp. It's so much more than sunshine and kids laughing and trying new things (though all of those things are wonderful). Camp creates this overwhelming sense of pride in just living. In being someone who's overcome their disease to make so much of themselves, to live with it longer than people in decades past. There's this sense that the kids can do anything, anything at all, and I think they really walk away from the week with that message. They are more than diabetes, they are more than the other things they think hold them back.




And there's proof! There's living, breathing proof. Usually one day towards the end of the week at lunch or dinner we bring up all the staff with diabetes and put them in a line base on how long they've been diagnosed. There's a variety of people there (you can tell in just the photo above) and they all stand there and say how long it is they've been living and thriving with a disease that still doesn't have a cure. This is the part where I always wind up getting teared up (and I'm getting teared up now as I type). I am so proud of my friends, my camp family. who have lived with their disease for so long and have no let it stop them in anyway. That's something to be proud of more than anything else and something that even us non-diabetics can take away from camp.

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