So this month–this week, actually, I think–marks the 16th anniversary of my diagnosis with type 1 diabetes.

Tonight I stumbled across this post (I almost reblogged it, but one of the pictures seems to be not actually for World Diabetes day, according to Google Image Search; the post also only highlighted type 1, and World Diabetes Day is for all people with diabetes, not just those with type 1) and I just cried. Because lighting up monuments for World Diabetes Day is something I didn’t know about, and the fact that people would agree to do that for a chronic illness that is too often reviled and misunderstood…I don’t have a word for how that makes me feel. “Touched” isn’t strong enough. Neither is “moved” any other word that might be used for it.

There are no words only tears of deep gratitude that someone in charge of the care of these monuments would be willing to do this, whatever their personal thoughts or motives might have been.

It seems like such a little thing, but it’s huge to me.

Here’s an article from 2007 about the first World Diabetes Day that has more pictures of more monuments.