{"id":20486,"date":"2011-10-07T10:42:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T14:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=20486"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:47:24","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:47:24","slug":"thinking-about-diabetes-and-guilt-on-yom-kippur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=20486","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About Diabetes and Guilt on Yom Kippur"},"content":{"rendered":"

How often has diabetes made you feel guilty?\u00a0 It happens to me all of the time.\u00a0 I feel guilty when I don’t check my blood sugar.\u00a0 I feel guilty when I eat something like the amazing fudge brownies (Mrs. Fields recipe<\/a>) that are in my refrigerator right now.\u00a0 I feel guilty when I don’t exercise (which happens way too often).<\/p>\n

*I should note here that guilt comes very naturally to me and even accidentally stepping on an ant makes me feel bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, being the sort of person who blames herself for everything, on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, you’d think I’d be racing to synagogue to ask God for forgiveness.\u00a0 But I’m not religious, so instead of going to pray and ask for forgiveness, I’m just going to stay home and feel guilty about not going to synagogue and asking for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Yom Kippur and feeling guilt have always gone hand-in-hand for me.\u00a0 Growing up in Houston, I went to synagogue every Yom Kippur with my family, including my great-grandfather and my grandmother, Bashy.\u00a0 Bashy was obsessed with feeding me and my brother, so nothing worried her more than the thought of a full day in synagogue and no food in sight.\u00a0 To be sure we wouldn’t starve, Bashy packed the trunk of her car with homemade baked goods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shortly after the services began, Bashy, who was always dressed in colorful, silk outfits and medium-heeled shoes, would sneak us out.\u00a0 She was anything but subtle, which made the whole sneaking thing especially ridiculous. \u00a0She’d lead us down the long hallway to the exit near the parking lot, straight into the 95 degree Texas sun.\u00a0 “You need to eat!” she’d declare, although barely two hours had passed since we’d had breakfast.\u00a0 Then she’d unlock the trunk of her car and pull out strudel that was triple wrapped in aluminum foil.\u00a0 If you think Bashy’s strudel was tasty, you’re wrong.\u00a0 When cooking and baking, Bashy was more interested in speed than accuracy.\u00a0 And she wasn’t big on mixing ingredients.\u00a0 Things just sort of came together in a bowl to form a dough, some jam was smeared onto the dough, and then it was baked until rock-hard.<\/p>\n

Year after year my brother and I obeyed Bashy and followed her outside where she took chunks of strudel from the boiling trunk of her car.\u00a0 The jam dripped everywhere, oozing from the heat, and staining our synagogue clothes.\u00a0 Eating on Yom Kippur, even for kids, seemed wrong, especially on synagogue grounds.\u00a0 But Bashy’s law was more powerful than God’s.\u00a0 We understood this well, so we didn’t object when Bashy told us to eat.\u00a0 We understood that in her mind, she was saving us. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But we also knew Bashy felt shame in what she was doing because when it came time to eat, she told us to sit in the roasting car so no one would see us.\u00a0 Her line was that we had to hide because if other kids saw her strudel, they would want some, and then we wouldn’t have enough.\u00a0 It was an obvious lie.\u00a0 No one wanted her strudel and anyway, she had enough in the trunk to feed the entire congregation.\u00a0 Still, we did as Bashy ordered.\u00a0 We downed our gravelly strudel with sweat on our brows and shame in our hearts.\u00a0 But we had reason to be grateful, too- at least she wasn’t pulling tuna sandwiches out of the trunk.<\/p>\n

Today I also have reason to be grateful.\u00a0 Yom Kippur is the one day of the year when diabetes gives me an advantage.\u00a0 Diabetes makes me exempt from fasting.\u00a0 I can eat tomorrow without guilt, as long as I stay away from the brownies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThinking About Diabetes and Guilt on Yom Kippur<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How often has diabetes made you feel guilty? It happens to me all of the time. 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