I had to care first: The inner work of self-advocacy
The self-advocacy playbook for metabolic health, part 2
This is the second article in a series about how I am learning to advocate for my own metabolic health. I’ll be sharing what I’ve tried, what I’ve learned, and what’s made a difference for me. Maybe some of it will resonate as you sort through your own health and wellness expedition.
I’m not a medical professional or a health coach. I’m simply sharing what I’ve done, what’s worked for me, in the hope that it might be useful to others. Everyone’s body, needs, and circumstances are different. This is not medical advice.
(Read the first article in the series.)
When people ask what changed for me, what helped me finally make progress after so many years of struggle, I wish the answer was simple. But the truth is, it started with a shift I ignored for a long time: I had to start caring about myself. Not just in theory. Not just in temporary bursts. I had to actually care, consistently, in ways that changed what I allowed, what I expected, and what I was willing to do to heal.
From resignation to readiness
For years, I lived with a quiet kind of resignation. I’d been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in 2007, and I believed what I’d been told: that it was chronic and progressive, and that I’d just have to manage it the best I could. I took the meds. I assumed my fate was sealed. My mother had Type 2 Diabetes and died at 55 of a cardiac event. I figured I would die young, too.
I didn’t have a strong foundation of self-worth to challenge that story. The idea of “self-care” made me uncomfortable. Who was I to put myself first? I’d spent a lifetime trying to earn my place by being useful to others, even when no one asked. I thought I was good at managing other people’s problems, not my own.
Eventually, that began to shift.
But the real turning point didn’t come all at once.
In March 2023, I listened to The Diabetes Code audio book and it cracked open a door I didn’t know was there. For the first time, I saw Type 2 Diabetes not as a lifelong sentence, but as something I could potentially reverse. I began experimenting with time-restricted eating (TRE), enough to begin lowering my A1C and gradually stop insulin injections with my endocrinologist’s OK. (That process continued through the end of 2023.)
But even as my labs improved, I hadn’t fully changed how I ate or how I lived. I was still snacking. Still drinking alcohol. Still eating grains and dairy. I was using fasting like a patch, not as part of a real healing pattern. The emotional work hadn’t begun.
That changed in late summer 2023, when I was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy.
That was the wake-up call.
Suddenly, the stakes weren’t just about numbers on a lab report, they were about my vision.
I started working with a somatic coach, and that gave me tools. Emotional support. Nervous system awareness. A safe place to tell the truth about how little I’d been prioritizing myself. The combination of new knowledge, lived consequence, and steady coaching helped me connect the dots: healing wasn’t about willpower. It was about self-respect. And that was something I could actually learn.
Rewriting the script
Caring for myself used to mean chasing short-term fixes: a new food plan, a brief burst of motivation, another round of trying to prove I could do it. But those efforts never stuck, because they weren’t rooted in anything real.
The biggest belief I had to confront?
Who do I think I am?
That question used to shut me down. Now, it opens me up.
I don’t need to prove anything. I need to be present in my own life. And that means choosing habits that actually support me, not punish me, not numb me, not distract me.
I’ve had to reckon with anger, too. Anger at a system that prescribes insulin without addressing the root causes. Anger at myself for not asking more questions sooner. And grief for the time I lost, for the harm I allowed, for the pain I didn’t know I could step out of.
But that anger became fuel. Not for blame, for change.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
Healing requires consistent presence. I started experimenting, tracking, and learning. I used my own data: glucose, ketones, labs, and how I felt, to build trust in my own process. And I kept returning to this simple truth:
I can’t advocate for myself if I don’t believe I matter.
This is still a work in progress. But I’m no longer trying to earn my way into healing by over-performing or under-eating or disappearing into someone else’s crisis. I’m here. I’m paying attention. And I’m committed to seeing what’s possible.
If I could go back
I’d tell myself this:
It’s OK to care about your own damn self.
It’s OK to stay in your own business instead of everyone else’s.
It’s OK to feel sad that it took this long.
And it’s more than OK to try anyway.
This is not a redemption arc. It’s not a “before and after.”
It’s a life I’m reclaiming, one act of care at a time.