[lemonadelife_blog]

I’ve known Naomi Kingery for, well, YEARS and she is one of the few people I have yet to meet in person. Through our online relationship, however, I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Naomi’s inspiring memoir, Sugar Free Me, and thought she had a spirited and inspirational way of living with the Big D. When I wrote my blog post last December about raising a teen with diabetes, Naomi emailed me to tell me about her newest book, Sugar Free Teens, available via e-book. Not bad for a 20-year-old! Not only that, but Naomi is also a fellow Christian and it is always inspiring for me to see* what God is doing in the lives of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Naomi offered to write a guest post about her life, so take an opportunity to see what she has to say and then I encourage you to hop over to her website, Live to Love Diabetes.


Like many of you, I am a statistic. According to the ADA “someone is diagnosed with diabetes every nineteen seconds.” At the age of twelve, I woke up from a coma and my life was forever changed with the diagnosis of a disease that I didn’t understand, and didn’t want to have to understand.

In the hospital I gave myself the nickname “The Diabetic Diva”. This was my way of telling diabetes that I wasn’t going to let it control my life, but I would allow it to enter my life and make it enhance the person I already was. I continuously reminded myself that for me to be a diabetic meant I was alive, and how can you complain about that? (Well…okay…I’ve complained about it many times. BUT I’m still alive! And that is a blessing that many of us overlook so often!)

While trying to accept my new life there were many questions asked and tears shed. I had to find a way to let go of who I used to be and embrace who I was becoming. Here I am, over eight years later, and I can honestly say that diabetes has helped form me into the adult I have become. How have I turned my lemon, my diabetes, into lemonade? I made sugar free lemonade!

At the age of eighteen I published my first book, Sugar Free Me, which is an inspirational book for diabetic teens and their loved ones. And last summer at the age of twenty, I released my first digital e-book Sugar Free Teens, The Diabetic Diva’s 5 tips on reaching your potential.

You can see that the common theme in my writings are devoted to the teen years, because these are the years where you decide who you are going to become and then try your best to become that person you envision. Then throw needles, fast heart beats, and shaky fingers into the mix. Or in my case, along with these, throw in asthma, low blood pressure, hypothyroidism, and acid reflux; all diagnosed during highschool. But I survived my teen years, and want to let every young diabetic out there know that they will do the same!

Everything in my life today surrounds diabetes, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It is my desire to touch lives in the diabetic community by spreading hope in what could seem like, and feel like, a hopeless situation. Being hopeful and having an optimistic outlook isn’t something that just happens, it’s something you have to decide. Choose to make lemonade in your life by finding ways to make diabetes help you reach your highest potential.

With love,
Naomi Kingery, The Diabetic Diva est. 9.2.01

Thanks, Naomi! Would you like to share YOUR Lemonade Life? If you’re dealing with something challenging and making lemonade out of it, please email me at amblass {@} gmail.com.

Filed under: Diabetes, Guest Post


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