Becky's Story

“You don’t look like a diabetic.”

Oh, but I do; this is the body of someone with type 1 diabetes.

This is the body that embarrassed me at age four when my ballet instructor told my mother I was “hopelessly lacking in grace.” The body I hid under baggy sweatshirts in junior high when it seemed too boxy and too boyish compared to the curves of other girls. And finally, the body that betrayed me when I was 27 by stopping producing insulin.

It’s also the body that carried me through three marathons when I desperately wanted to quit.

The body that crashed and bled the first time I lined up to race my bike against the fastest women in America and still brought me smiling to the finish line.

The body that stretched and adapted to carry two beautiful children into this world.

It’s the body that wakes up every morning at 4:30 am to start training before I get the kids off to school and myself to work. It’s the body that races in the Team Novo Nordisk jersey to inspire all the others who also don’t look like they have diabetes.

With diabetes, there is an expectation of how one should look, and this gets misrepresented frequently. Before diabetes and as I was growing up, I was affected by the idea of body image. I’m not exactly sure when women turn against their bodies and indulge in negative self-talk. But instead of carrying these notions into adulthood, I decided to see my body as this amazing vehicle that helps me accomplish incredible things. At this point, my body is too busy chasing its dreams to worry about how it gets labeled.

Becky Furuta