Yesterday, I turned 29 years old. True to Hugging the Cactus tradition, I’m using today’s blog post as an opportunity to reflect on how I feel about this next year of my life.

I’m feeling…just fine about 29. Before you think I’m just saying that because it rhymes, or because I’m not genuinely happy to be 29 (the rhyming is just a bonus and honestly, I’m happy to be any age because it means I’m living and that’s a wonderful thing), let me jump in and say it feels fine because…it just feels right for me, right here and right now. It’s not “just fine” in a sarcastic or curt way; rather, it’s “just fine” in the sense that it feels good and perfectly acceptable and something that I will embrace.

To tie it all back to diabetes, “good and perfectly acceptable and something that I will embrace” is kind of the attitude that I strive to maintain when it comes to how I feel about my diabetes. Of course, I have my days where everything is far from good, perfectly acceptable, or embrace-worthy. But generally speaking, I’ve worked hard to get to a place where I simply and peacefully coexist with my diabetes. I ride the waves of highs and lows and always find a way or means to overcome the unexpected ripples of randomness that my diabetes drifts my way.

So I’d like to carry that mindset into the last year of my 20s: a mindset in which I take comfort in knowing that I’m capable of riding the waves caused by diabetes, or anything else in my life, really. Arming myself with the knowledge that I grow through what I go through will help me thrive with diabetes and life, and it seems like an excellent nugget of wisdom to bring with me into year 29.