Hilltown Families 
Archives
Facebook has found a way into our daily rituals. It doesn’t get more local than reading the overshared personal musings/ ventings of a friend or neighbor (or stranger!). It’s an addiction! Many people are social media cynics (some of us were burned by MySpace where one morning we woke up and everyone had left town- noooooo!) and Rebecca started out as such.
As a journalist, Rebecca has a different meaning for “news feed.” If you think this installment is all about Facebook bashing though, you’re wrong. As a mom raising a child with type one diabetes, Rebecca reveals how the power of Facebook has lent a helping hand….
There is no doubting the stress and pressure of raising a child with two autoimmune diseases as Rebecca shares monthly here in her column, “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.” It leads to consecutive nights of interrupted sleep where Rebecca has to constantly check on her child’s condition. While taxing, it can often lead to cherished moments in the silence of the night as she watches her child sleep. It’s how memories are made.
Sometimes blessings come in unusual packages, like wrapped up in rawhide! Read about how a kind gesture at an iconic national park led to a great end to a trying day in Rebecca’s monthly column, “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.”
“I have long thought the idea of a cure for diabetes is not going to happen because pharmaceutical companies are making an obscene amount of money off of diabetics,” writes Rebecca Dravis this month in her column, “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.” This month Rebecca takes a look at a recent rabble-rousing and what really is important when it comes to educating people about diabetes…
This month in “Just My Type,” Rebecca supports two young girls as they face type 1 diabetes every minute of every hour of every day of their lives.
This month in “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes,” Rebecca talks about her transition from a working professional to a stay at home mom (SAHM) so she can take better care of her daughter. Diagnosed with type one diabetes three years ago, Rebecca would choose to work 100 hours a week doing manual labor if it meant she had a healthy child at home… but for now she’s made the decision to care for her daughter… and in doing so, care for herself!
When Rebecca’s type one diabetic daughter declares she never wants to talk to her mother again after a morning tiff before school, she is left hurt and reflective on why the hurt emotions… everyday her daughter is in the care of others, a hard thing to allow when your child’s life can be at stake, and what if this day, the day the two parted on in disagreement, was a day her fears actualize? The sweetness of a marshmallow heart helps soften the anxiety and mend the mood…
When the Christmas tree hits the floor and tinsel and ornaments go flying, there’s not much to do other than up the pieces and put it all back together again. This is a metaphor Rebecca uses to lift herself up as she tries to put the pieces of a “normal” life back together for her family this month in “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.”
“As this pre-Thanksgiving column was percolating in my head over the last couple of weeks, I had decided to revisit the idea of counting my blessings instead of my burdens,” writes Rebecca this month in “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.” Three years ago her daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and most recently, Addison’s disease… yet she is able to see how her life is blessed even while dealing with life challenges. Here are the top five things she is grateful for in her life….
Helping other families with Type One Diabetes…
“Diabetes has a way of crowding out everything else in life. Nowhere is that more true than with childhood illnesses and injuries,” begins Rebecca this month in her column, “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.” In this intimate look at how she manages the wellness of her diabetic child when it’s not diabetes, she finds herself with “nothing left to give.”
“What’s in a name?” asks Hilltown Families Contributing Writer, Rebecca Dravis, this month in “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes.” Rebecca shares how she struggles with empowering her daughter with ways to explain her diabetes to curious children without provoking judgement or misunderstanding from adults…
This month in “Just My Type: Raising a Child with Type One Diabetes,” Hilltown Families Contributing Writer, Rebecca Dravis, shares her summer camp experience as a parent of a Type 1 Diabetes child…
Here’s to New Beginnings My best friend Jean is eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. I’ve known Jean for almost two decades, since her first week at college when she walked into the office of the student newspaper of which I was editor and said she wanted to be a reporter. Our friendship has ebbed and flowed with life over the years, as some of the best friendships… Read More
Another year wiser? The fact that it was my birthday made the day even more ridiculous. It was Friday, April 26. Instead of going on the surprise getaway to Cape Cod that my husband tried to plan, I had to work. I work for the Girl Scouts, and one of my tasks that day was to deliver a prize to a girl in a troop meeting in Sheffield. Here’s how I had… Read More
Camped Out Now that spring seems finally to be here, my thoughts have turned to summer. Summer camp, that is. This is difficult time of year for us. My daughter, Noelle, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 4 1/2, about the time parents start thinking about organized summer activities for their children. The first summer, before she entered kindergarten, wasn’t too bad. We allowed her to go to half-day… Read More
Putting up a Fight Having a marital spat in the middle of a chain department store is not my idea of fun. Yet there my husband and I were, 7-year-old Noelle in tow, marching through the store, hissing at each other in a not-so-very-nice fashion. – It’s just one more way that diabetes brings out the worst in us. You see, it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill dispute. No, this fight was about… Read More
No Cause for Alarm A year ago I won an alarm clock in a church raffle. I know … exciting, right? It actually was. It was a very cool alarm clock. It was shaped like an egg, flashed different colors and had many features like a timer, date and temperature. My daughter, Noelle,picked it out from a pile of items we could choose from in the raffle. She knows how much her… Read More
Special Treatment Those words mean different things to different people. Raising a child with a serious disease, I’ve come to embrace everything that’s positive about these two words. That puts me at odds with lots of people, including with my own husband, who never wants our daughter to feel “different” because she has diabetes — even though she is. The issue first came up the summer after my daughter Noelle was diagnosed,… Read More
Chew On This This past Thanksgiving, the cheese bit back. In our home, Thanksgiving has been a holiday that focuses on the three Fs: family, football — and food. Because of that, it is the second of the five late fall/early winter obstacles our family must hurdle while raising a child with type one diabetes. The first is Halloween, which probably goes without saying (Just how many carbs ARE in a fun-size… Read More
Happy Anniversary to Us I remember clearly my daughter’s last carefree moment of childhood… Noelle was 4 years old, and my husband and I had picked her up early from preschool on a Friday to bring her to the doctor’s office. I found her playing in the classroom, absorbed in a game of blocks. When we called for her to get her things to come with us, she ran to us, calling… Read More
The Right Call “I need a cell phone for my 6-year-old.” The words sounded as absurd as I feared they would as I stood defiantly in front of the Verizon guy at BJs in Pittsfield. After all, what kind of crazy mom buys a cell phone for a first-grader? The Verizon guy, though, barely blinked. “What do you need?” he asked in a casual tone that made me wonder if he has… Read More
Getting Away From it All When does the offer of a night away with your husband make you reach for the antacids instead of the lingerie? When you’re leaving behind a child with type one diabetes. My daughter, Noelle, is a bright, rambunctious 6-year-old who is eager to enter first grade in just a few days. Only in one way is she not a typical little girl: When she was 4½, in… Read More
Cultural Itineraries
- Season: January & February
- Season: March & April
- Season: May & June
- Season: July & August
- Season: September & October
- Season: November & December
