When I was young, my dad (the agnostic) used to say “If there IS a God, you are going to have two girls JUST LIKE YOU”.

My dad is converted. There is a God. I’ve got those two girls (my poor husband).

Good news is, neither are nearly as awful as I was – they both are pretty solid, stand up girls.

Totally different, as most siblings are – but both pretty magnificent.

This is Piper, my 18 year old. She should have been a model. 5’10, lean, strong, graceful and talented. She does everything well, with an organic style and natural ability that is uniquely hers. Graceful at surfing, snowboarding, volleyball, soccer….anything she tries, she does with style. And she can dance, man can she dance, with a rhythm that is smooth and fluent which she carries through every aspect of her life.

She was the “cool girl” in school. Everyone knew her. “Piper? Oh she is that super chill chick….”. Her beauty routine is pure and simple (on a fancy day, mascara AND lipgloss). Her hair is effortless and naturally “beachy”. Her style, well, just flat out “cool’.

School was easy breezy for her. Her GPA was “average” but that is because she never tried. She held 3.2, but that came with zero effort, no homework, no late study nights… if she pushed herself, a 4.0+ would have been a piece of cake – but that was not HER piece of cake, so we chose our battles, and a 3.2 it was.

She has a big group of friends, boys by the truckload she is constantly turning away, college freshman in the prime of her life.

This girl, she has it all. But my Piper….she struggles. Oh how she struggles.

She was diagnosed with T1Diabetes when she was 11.

Contrary to many naive comments and majority thinking, she did not “eat a lot of candy and get diabetes”. Ironically, the girls were raised Vegan and neighbors and store clerks alike were shocked at their ability to enjoy a baggie of broccoli or cucumber sticks OVER candy.

T1D is actually rare. Makes up 5% of all Diabetes out there (it’s Type 2 you hear about in the news all the time). T1D is caused by a fluky random auto-immune disease which in short terms, killed her pancreas. She eats, and the food/energy goes straight in to her blood – her blood sugar skyrockets and makes her feel like she is on crack. Then it drops and she goes low and she feels like she was hit by a bus. If it goes too low, she dies. If it stays too high for too many years, terrible stuff happens to her body.

It sucks. It is life sentence. It doesn’t mean it will kill her. But it does mean she will have it for life and must deal with it and get control of it.

But she isn’t. She is utterly rebellious and scared and fearful, and lives her life very dangerously.

I’ve recently accepted her lot in life similar to a parent who is dealing with a child who is an addict.

It controls her.

It consumes her.

It is her God, she is helpless against it. She doesn’t own diabetes. It owns her.

There are very basic, responsible things diabetics must to do stay healthy. She doesn’t do those things. She doesn’t test her blood regularly to check where her sugars are. She eats whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and guesses with her insulin injections which are usually wrong, so she either over, or under medicates.

She drinks. She swears not alot. But she does. I know this.

She also smokes ecigs, is on birth control, and doesn’t exercise.

Cool huh? Isn’t that what all the cool kids do?

Yeah, not the ones with diabetes.

I feel like I am a pretty liberal mom. I am not a cool mom who lets her drink, or parties with her, I’m just a realist. I myself (and my husband who was equally rebellious), lived through the stuff she is doing – tenfold. I don’t condone it, but I work hard, to navigate through it.

Growing up, she was always honest with me. So instead of batting down the hatches as my own parents did, and prohibit her from being part of parties where “stuff” happens,  I accepted this was part of Piper’s world under the conditions she was honest with me, and I do think she was.

Instead of fighting her on it, my husband and I taught her to make smart decisions. “Be that girl that drives everyone home Piper, be that girl that takes that next drink away or keys away when someone is about to drive….take care of them. And she does.

But take care of you Piper.

And that, she doesn’t do.

She is scared. She is so scared. She tells me occasionally, in rare moments of honesty and brutal truth, she feels like she won’t live a long time, like she is not destined for this world and diabetes will kill her. She has misconceptions that she can never have a baby, that she likely won’t even get married as she probably won’t live that long.

Tell me how to deal with that sucker-punch. Please, honestly, tell me.

I can see her life. I can see her future. I can see her sharp wit and brilliance setting her high on an executive seat in the coolest company ever, having a dynamic exciting career.

I can see her married to the love of her life, with a litter of surf rats running around beneath her feet.

I can see her traveling the world, giving, loving, doing, being.

I can see her joyful and healthy and strong and sharing and teaching and helping others that were just like her when she was a stupid teenager.

But she can’t. She can’t see that. Not yet.

Oh how I wish the power that my vision would translate to her, how I wish that the power of my belief in her future were strong enough to carry her through life.

But it’s not.

So back to the analogy of the parents dealing with the drug addict kid.

It’s her lesson. It’s her journey. It’s her life, it’s her sadness, it’s her sorrow, and it’s her joy, when she finds it.

But as my baby, as my sweet girl, as my flesh and blood  – her sorrow and her joy, are felt deep in my soul. Profound and raw.

We won’t give up, her dad and I.

We keep motivating and supporting and guiding and educating. And I know, deep in my bones, she will get it. She will be that girl.

She simply, has to.