What diabetes looks like?
How can we help people understand?
Do the images you see in the world today align with the images of your life with diabetes?
Are you satisfied with the stock photography and the tired old video clips depicting diabetes? Are you frustrated by everyone assuming they know what diabetes looks like?
Do these images and videos tell the real story about diabetes, or are they helping to spread misinformation and stigma – things we’re all working so hard to change.
How can we help people understand what living with diabetes is really like when we’re surrounded by so much stigma and misunderstanding? How can we display the dignity that comes with caring for ourselves? How can we show the strength and determination?
Why Walk With D?
There is an old saying, “You can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Which is what the Walk With D campaign is all about. It’s designed to peel back the layers of misunderstanding and to help build bridges.
You can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
How Can I Participate?
Simple – share your story, and connect with your peers. Living your life with diabetes is a very under-appreciated form of advocacy. By sharing some of your day through your favorite social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and the #WalkWithD hashtag you’ll be helping to change how the world sees diabetes.
Together, we can create a collage that shows people both in and outside of the diabetes community the reality of life with diabetes.
Connect with others touched by diabetes to understand their journey and to let them know that they don’t walk alone. Check out the streaming collection of #WalkWithD updates on the WalkWithD.com Tagboard:
Share some of your diabetes day with the world over the next couple of months (be sure to include the #WalkWithD hashtag) to help tell the real story. Together we can show the world what diabetes really looks like.
Let’s display the dignity in diabetes.
[…] without ever using that scary word. Fellow type 1 and longtime diabetes blogger Scott Johnson captures the essence of this campaign in one of his recent […]
I like it. Thanks for spreading word about what this is, and giving us the 411 to participate, Scott. Looking forward to sharing some thoughts and reading what others have to say, and of course sharing that with the world so they know, too.