Diabetics Doing Wild Child in the Tree T1D with Celia Johnson

[00:00:08] Rob Howe: Welcome to the Diabetics Doing Things podcast. We've been telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics all across the world since 2015, and we have over a thousand years of living with T1D on the podcast. The interviews range from incredible feats to everyday victories, and we celebrate them all just the same. Thanks for listening, and if you want to get involved even further, just send me an email. at rob at diabeticsdoingthings.com. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Diabetics Doing Things. We are telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics from all across the world. My very special guest today is Celia Johnson. Celia, welcome to the show.

[00:01:02] Celia Johnson: Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor.

[00:01:05] Rob Howe: Well, we're really excited to have you here. And for those of you who may not know Celia by her first name or her given name, she's also wildchildinthetreet1d on Instagram. And I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about the two sort of sides, the Celia side and the wildchildinthetreet1d. I'm sure there's some interesting stories there.

[00:01:30] Celia Johnson: Yeah, let's get into it.

[00:01:32] Rob Howe: Sure, let's do it. As usual, we'll kind of start with diagnosis, but once we branch out from there, I'm really excited to dig in and see what we find.

[00:01:40] Celia Johnson: All right, that sounds good.

[00:01:43] Rob Howe: So let's talk about it. Tell us how you joined the Type 1 family.

[00:01:50] Celia Johnson: Gosh, well, I was 16, living in New Hampshire. I was an athlete. I was a freestyle snowboarder and a volleyball player. I played junior Olympic volleyball and just, you know, always, always working out. And I remember it was in the early part of the like January and my vision started to go really blurry. And when I would be going off of snowboard jumps, I remember being like, wow, this doesn't seem super safe. I'm like not able to see what I'm doing anymore. And I thought that was kind of bizarre. We got my eyes checked. I got, ended up getting glasses at that point, but simultaneously my mom had me go in to get tested. And I didn't even know what I was being tested for. Um, because at the same time, I had the very typical, um, the kind of typical diagnosis where I started craving sugar. I lost a lot of weight. I couldn't sleep. I remember one day, I thought it was so bizarre how often I had to go pee that I wrote it down like I did tally marks and it was 40 times in one day. I was like, gosh, that just seems very strange. That seems excessive, right? Yeah, I remember not being able to get through class without getting up twice, every class. And I was a really studious individual. And so getting up and having to leave class every, you know, half an hour felt really like quite ridiculous. And so pretty quickly, my mom knew something was wrong. She's pretty attuned to that. And I went in, got tested. Again, I didn't know what I was being tested for. And it came back immediately that I was diabetic. I'm from a pretty small town in New Hampshire. So there weren't, as far as I can remember, I don't remember all of the specifics. I mean, your brain's not working perfectly when your blood sugar is 500. So my memory is a little bit fuzzy as to all of the fine details of what happened after that. But I wasn't put into the hospital or anything. I was pretty much shown then and there how to use insulin, how to use Lantus. Um, and then I was brought into a couple hour training session for, um, where I was essentially taught the basics of type 2 diabetes, um, which, you know, eating sugar-free candy and all of that kind of stuff. So for the first couple of years of being diabetic, I kind of had a little bit of misinformation. Um, and I didn't really know the resources on like where to go or how to get better information. There weren't a lot of other type 1 diabetics around. And so luckily I was in the honeymoon stage for a while. And I remember talking to my mom and just being like, you know what, I really am having a hard time with the doctor that I was seeing. he would I'm not sure if other people have had this experience but he would scold me if I you know not physically but like mentally kind of say I was being a bad diabetic if I did things that were not in the protocol for being a good diabetic and so I actually transferred to Dartmouth Hitchcock after a little while and started going to their endocrine department which was it was kind of night and day for me in terms of care and I went there for a while and yeah and then went off to college so that's sort of how everything happened it was I remember when I when they first told me I was diabetic I started laughing because my only my my the only education I had ever had about diabetes was really like tv commercials about diabetes type 2 and and that was it and so when someone told me that I was diabetic and did not specify what that meant I just thought that was like the craziest diagnosis there was no way that could happen I was so healthy I was so young I was so fit so yeah yeah

[00:06:12] Rob Howe: And you know, it's funny, you bring up the dreaded diabetes, Wilford Brimley commercial. I was in a meeting with some JDRF people in Dallas a few months ago, and someone asked, you know, who would be a great spokesperson nationally for type 1 diabetes? And I couldn't, I was laughing as well, because it's a joke, but also I think it has some merit to it. seriously, Wilford Brimley would be a great diabetes advocate to sort of set the record straight between the differences between type 1 and type 2, because everyone has seen that

[00:06:52] Celia Johnson: commercial. Oh, yeah. So many people. It's ingrained. It is. It's like a cultural moment.

[00:06:58] Rob Howe: It's like this moment in time. I remember even billboards with his face on it, like, do you have type 2 diabetes? And just the way people say it. And it's just it's a joke. And I think it's hard for me because I am very involved in the comedy community here in Dallas. And I think respect comedic writers and my brain thinks comedically. So I have a hard time commiserating with people who get really upset over jokes about diabetes. I admit they're insensitive, but jokes about people are never funny. No one, you know, when the joke's about you, nobody thinks it's funny. So, but I do think, you know, and I'm rambling here a little bit, but Wilford Brimley, I think I would challenge that there's no better diabetes spokesman than Wilford Brimley. We just have to get the message right. That's my, and that's my big, if you want to put a big hairy audacious goal on the wall for me, would be to pitch Wilford Brimley as the diabetes spokesperson one more time. Let's bring it back.

[00:07:58] Celia Johnson: Yeah, well, just setting the record a little bit straight, because I feel like so much of what I end up doing when I meet someone who's interested in type in diabetes, like if we that comes up in conversation is number one, first educating the differences between type 1 and type 2. And if my blood sugar is high, no, I don't need a candy bar, you know, which is, you know, that would be probably the same if I was talking to anyone with some other autoimmune disease that I didn't understand, too. But, yeah, so much of our existence, I feel like, is type 1 diabetics is education based. Yeah, and it's interesting.

[00:08:40] Rob Howe: I mean, a lot of what we all do is education based. even people who are not bloggers or active in the community. Every day is an education battle with the people that we come in contact with.

[00:08:53] Celia Johnson: Exactly. And reminding people, too, that one thing I find is so interesting, people will always tell me about their friend or their relative or someone who had a horrendous experience with type 1 diabetes. And I'll be like, oh. Or they'll say, oh, my aunt had type 1 diabetes. I'm like, oh, great. How is she doing? And they're like, oh, you know, she lost her leg and she's blind. And I'm like, oh, Dios mío. Like sometimes it's funny the things that people feel the need to bring up in conversation.

[00:09:29] Rob Howe: And I think they think they're being helpful or they're trying to relate. It's just, yeah, I think after a certain amount of times of always hearing, oh, yeah, my grandmother had diabetes. She died. Yeah.

[00:09:41] Celia Johnson: there's only so much negative we could hear yeah I'm pretty numb to it I kind of I just laugh it off but it's just really funny and then I it also makes me think like oh how do I relate to people who you know in just interactions daily when I'm trying to relate to someone what do I say that could be totally taken differently than I intended it to be oh man my anxiety is running wild now at that thought. No, I'm so sorry. I did not mean to do that. Sometimes I just get lost in thought. But yeah, just being attuned and aware of what we bring to a conversation.

[00:10:18] Rob Howe: So and I think speaking of that, there's no better relevant point than that right now, because I do want to back up a little bit to your story, because you mentioned being diagnosed in a small town scenario. I don't know how rural, I don't think rural is maybe the right word.

[00:10:36] Celia Johnson: No, not rural. It was, it was small about, I think, 12,000 people.

[00:10:40] Rob Howe: And see, that's, and even in, you know, Texas terms, that's not even really considered a quote unquote small town, right? So, you know, at least a medium sized community, small town community, you can still run into issues with endocrinologists or physicians, not having the latest and greatest education, technology, access, or even need. I think a lot of us are hard on endocrinologists, but most endocrinologists handle 90, 95% type 2 diabetes cases. And so that's no excuse for them to not be aware when there's a type 1 in the room. But, you know, sometimes you catch them on a day where maybe they're not as in tune, they're people too, whatever the case is and you know things can can get messed up i think it's interesting your story i don't often get to hear about rural diagnosis and rural again is not the right word but smaller town away from the big city um disconnected maybe from the mainstream education diagnoses because they make a big difference. And for you, did you notice any difference in the way you approached your type 1 or the way you felt about it, the relationship you had with it because of that experience until you got to the Dartmouth hospital?

[00:12:04] Celia Johnson: So, you know, it's actually interesting. I think one of the biggest changes that in my diabetes care management has actually come not necessarily from the doctors themselves that I have personally interacted with, but from the people that I've interacted with. So moving, now I live in Reno, we have a significantly larger population than back East, but, um, the men and women that I've spoken to who have had different types of care, um, like if they work at Stanford or over in the Bay Area or just in any bigger city that has a lot more, I don't know if it's resources, but they just have different care than I was used to growing up in New Hampshire. I've learned a lot just from those diabetics in terms of what they have learned from their doctors. It's been really eye-opening. And even with technology, just being able to access more information than I ever had when I was younger, because I didn't necessarily know the questions to ask. And so a lot of my care management, like the, you know, the failures in it, or however you want to phrase it, it wasn't necessarily in the doctors, they didn't necessarily know what I didn't know. But I didn't know what questions to ask also. And so I think the evolution of technology and being able to just have a wider, cast a wider net in terms of information gathering. Have you ever heard the podcast? It's with Dr. Lowe, and she interviewed Dr. Jody Stanislaw, who's a naturopath out of Seattle, Washington.

[00:13:46] Rob Howe: I have not.

[00:13:47] Celia Johnson: So what kind of changed the course of my diabetes management actually came only about a year ago. And that's sort of when I left my job of seven years and started working for myself and started my master's program. I completely changed my life pretty much after listening to the podcast because I never heard anyone articulate their experience with type 1 diabetes in quite the same way as she does. And I was actually just talking to my endocrinologist just before this. I was at a meeting with him and I asked him like if he is interested in really, truly trying to empathize with a type, the type 1 diabetes community to listen to the podcast, because she's a naturopath who has lived with diabetes for almost her entire life and has found she used to. I mean, her background is really fascinating, but I just remember listening to that podcast. I found it randomly and I was out for a morning walk and started crying because it was like this crazy release of emotion of being able to connect with someone on such a different level than I'd ever connected with anyone else before. even though I wasn't talking to her or anything, but it felt like she was speaking directly to my experience and all of the emotion that had been pent up over so many years and had never been able to express it with anyone else before. So it was really great.

[00:15:15] Rob Howe: What do you remember, because I haven't heard the interview and I just jotted down a note to make sure that I get the link from you before we hang up.

[00:15:24] Celia Johnson: Yeah.

[00:15:24] Rob Howe: What about the interview specifically, since I'll definitely include that in the show notes, what about the interview specifically did you connect with? What were those triggers for you that are like, wow, I needed to hear this. This is for me.

[00:15:41] Celia Johnson: Oh, gosh. One thing that I connected with was just like the relentlessness of type 1 diabetes. Not necessarily in a bad way. Like I don't hold it against diabetes or myself or my genetics or anything, but like it is something you never, ever, ever, ever get a break from. You could do everything correctly and still have your blood sugar shoot to 400 and not be able to get it down for hours. You know, and it's just it was just interesting hearing someone else articulate that. So I knew I wasn't alone in that because for so long, you know, I guess one of the things this is going kind of on a tangent, but I for so long, I just felt alone in it because I I knew I was diabetic, but I did not engage at all with the diabetes community. I went through life kind of charging forward, you know, dealing with my diabetes, but not letting it run the show. And as soon as I started to embrace that part of myself, you know, I gave up being an amateur pro snowboarder because it was literally killing me. And I started to finally really dedicate some time and energy to focusing on my diabetes. diabetes. And once I finally embraced that part of myself and didn't hold it against myself, it was, it made things a lot easier. And one thing I started doing was just following, I'm sure you've done this for years. And I think a lot of diabetics have done this forever, but I just didn't engage in the community at all. But as soon as I started to, you know, start following people on Instagram, who have type 1 diabetes, following hashtags on Instagram, for like T1D or diabetes, it really changed my world because I started to actually, I will laugh out loud when I'm scrolling through Instagram, just at the funny memes that people post that are actually like kind of horrifying. It's like about how you never take a vacation from diabetes, but I'll start laughing because I'm like, it's so true. You don't, or like, you know, just funny things that you would only ever understand if you were diabetic or lived with someone with diabetes. And so I think just how she was talking about community and how you, you know, to bring it back to that podcast, how it's something that you never get a break from. It just made me realize like, I will never get a break from it. So I need to kind of lean into that experience and, um, and work with what I'm given. Well, it's interesting. You said that

[00:18:24] Rob Howe: about the community piece that i probably always have done this uh or you know and made that sort of generalization because yeah that was a hundred percent not my not my reality i did not i did not lean into the community for the first 10 years really that i and i didn't resist it but i just was doing my own thing and i didn't want to be a burden i felt like if i would that i was putting that on other people and I wanted to be able to handle it and I was Mr. Macho, masculine, I can do anything, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I also didn't want to be known for having diabetes. I wanted to be known for the things that I do and then it was just like a thing that you throw in. It's like, oh yeah, and he has diabetes, but I never wanted to use it as an excuse or felt like I needed special treatment. And that's not what I found in the community. I think just by being open to it and like you said, swiping through and deciding, hey, I want to go and look at these hashtags. I want to know who else is out there with type 1 that I can be friends with.

[00:19:29] Celia Johnson: Yeah, it's really empowering. It is.

[00:19:32] Rob Howe: And I think like it's also funny because you said, you know, you laugh at the memes. Like I laugh at just the gross day to day stuff we have to do. You know, like diabetes is not very glamorous 90 percent of the time. And certainly social media is this very curated, very, very like best of the best, like very selected, very touched up world. But diabetes is not like that at all. So like seeing people give injections, seeing people's blood, seeing people showing ripped out sites. I thought I was like, wow, like we really deal with some crap. And I think it was nice to just see bad blood sugar readings or high blood sugar readings. I don't even, I have to like slap myself on the wrist. There's no bad blood sugar. It's just like there's highs and lows, right? So seeing those and seeing people share them and being like, hey, I had a shitty day today with my type 1, but I'm going to keep going. That was such a relief for me and just gave me, it just kind of took away, like shared the burden. And, you know, it's just like carrying a canoe. It's easier when you got people running alongside and with you can help you bear the load. And I think many people have found that and even still trying to define that and tell people about it. I really feel like that is the key to this sort of T1D renaissance era that we're living in where for the first time, social media communities have brought people together from all across the world. So even somebody like yourself from a small town in New Hampshire can connect with me from Texas, connect with somebody from Australia or New Zealand or Canada or the UK or Africa. and we can commiserate and help each other all in the same time in real time. Yeah. To me, that's so powerful and I think an underlooked part of what's happening on social media. I think there's a lot of negative and there's a lot of press and headlines about celebrities and things, but there are also these pockets of total goodness that really help people and make a difference for people.

[00:21:35] Celia Johnson: I completely agree. Yeah, absolutely. And it was really fascinating. So when I started my master's program, I ended up switching what my focus was. I switched it to co-creating a space here in Reno, Nevada. Not a physical space, but a space like a face-to-face group. Not really a support group, but like an adventure group for women with type 1 diabetes. because it seems like there's a lot of or there is a support group here for children with type 1 diabetes, which is phenomenal. But then if you age out of it, there's nowhere to go. And I struggled really hard with that because my family's not around here. I didn't really have any kind of support network when I moved out here. And then to have diabetes on top of that was very challenging. And so when I decided to switch my master's focus to that, I put a post out on social media. And a friend who is actually from New Hampshire, who moved out here, he saw that post and connected me with someone who also lives in the Reno Tahoe area, who had just put another post up saying that she was going to start like really working on her type 1 diabetes, and and wanted to be kind of held accountable for that via like social media. And so it was pretty magical that moment when I got a text message from him saying like, hey, just saw your post. I'm going to put you in contact with my friend. And so she was like the very beginning, like first person to join the community that I started. And so that was a really wild and really cool moment in my life to be like, this is what I'm doing. And I, I really want to bring people together around type 1 diabetes, but like going and doing stuff that doesn't, you know, we're gonna we go hiking, and we do like watercolor painting outside and stuff. So it's not focused on diabetes. It's not that medical side. It's just type 1 diabetic women getting together and like sharing a really fun experience. So well, and I think that's,

[00:23:50] Rob Howe: that's such an interesting point of view to take from a global perspective. I think that we do a great job in the community, both JDRF does a great job, we do a great job on the education side for children and parents diagnosed with type 1, and rightfully so. I think those are super important. And, you know, without those resources, I think there would be a lot of really hard times for people. We don't do a great job of community for people who are over the age of 18 and get diagnosed, whether they're 22 or 35. And beyond type 1, I think has sort of set the bar for that type 1 lifestyle brand and type 1 community for people and for caregivers and for people who speak Spanish and for people, you know, overseas. And I think they have really, you know, because of them, the other organizations are now trying to focus on, oh, well, what do we do with these people who we've never talked to before? How do we get them and let them know that we're advocating for them? Because they are, but they don't always know how to communicate because we're, you know, we're all a little bit different than, you know, we're not children. We don't have parents that are actively involved in our clinical care. And also we don't want to hear clinical messages. I I told Medtronic Diabetes last fall that the term like better outcomes couldn't resonate less with an audience of real patients. We don't know what that means. Right. And I think we just, you know, we want to live a better life. We want to know what to do. We want to know that we're okay just the way we are. Right. And so to hear, you know, talks about, you know, you and your group of type 1 diabetic women who get together and don't even talk about diabetes because sometimes that's not important. You just need to do stuff with people who have type 1 and can relate to you in other ways.

[00:25:41] Celia Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. And it just, I don't know, there's something so like, and again, going back to the memes, they just made me laugh. I saw one recently where it was like a funny face and above it, it said like that feeling you get when you are in a coffee shop and you see someone with an insulin pump and you just immediately connect with them. or I'm not sure how often that happens to you, but it's happened to me several times where I will be just wandering around and someone will see my pump and come up to me and start talking. And they have an insulin pump too. And there's just that sort of immediate connection. It doesn't matter what your background is, but you just connect on a different level than I ever have with anybody else, which is really special.

[00:26:27] Rob Howe: I still remember the first time I met someone in the wild with type 1. I was at Chipotle in this like, and I've told this story before on the podcast, but I'll tell it again. The guy was just like a snowboarder bro, like with a crazy bright blue, like basketball cap, baseball cap on and basketball shorts. And I was living in Colorado at the time. And he like walks you to go, dude, like check out me too. And he just said me too. And he pulled out his insulin pump. and I was like kind of uncomfortable just like just kind of taking it back because it had never happened to me before but after that now every time I do I immediately go talk to that person because yeah it's just a good feeling to say hey like oh man this person seems normal and they're

[00:27:11] Celia Johnson: talking to me this is great yeah yeah like you're not in it by yourself there's like that that little reminder that like the struggle the struggle associated with this other people have walked that path before.

[00:27:29] Rob Howe: Yeah, a lot of people have. And the crazy thing is a lot of them, whenever I meet, I've gone to now two type 1 nations this year and I've been to a couple last year and the year before as well. But for the first time, I'm going to different parts of the country and talking to people. So I get to meet more people face-to-face, which is one of my big goals for the year. and in interacting with people who've had type 1 for more than 50 years is the most encouraging thing I think I've found in my entire time in the community because wow thinking about the resources that they didn't have even really 20 years ago so for the first 30 to 35 years that they were diagnosed they had like nothing it was like the worst technology you know they were boiling needles and dealing with R and NPH, like these really not great solutions because, you know, science just wasn't as advanced. We didn't know as much about how pancreases worked and there wasn't enough technology. And now there's great technology just in the last, you know, 13 years that I've been diagnosed. And I get encouraged for, I see, I can see myself 35 years from now and say, you know what, my life is going to be like, if these people could do it and look how great they're living now and they're still involved, I get a lot of hope for what my next few years are going to look like and for what my friends' few years are going to look like. Yeah, I think that we are,

[00:29:01] Celia Johnson: I mean, every year just the technological advances are pretty mind-blowing. I mean, in the 15 years that I've had diabetes, going from manually checking every couple hours, to having a really bad CGM like that failed every time I went for a run to now having a hypersensitive CGM that is so accurate. I mean, just even in that little amount of time, it's pretty phenomenal. Just the peace of mind that comes with some of those technological advances. It's heartwarming to know that there are people out there doing phenomenal work for us. because it's something that I would never know how to do.

[00:29:50] Rob Howe: Yeah, and I think how great is CGM, right? I resisted it forever. It's amazing. I for some reason thought that I didn't need it, which was dumb. And I think it's interesting kind of the conversations that we have with ourselves because my control is good and I didn't feel like it was necessary. But I was also so involved in the community and I didn't realize what I was missing out on. And holy crap, it's like the best thing ever.

[00:30:18] Celia Johnson: it's before again another meme I saw someone posting like hey did you have a good night's sleep and it's like yeah I got a full 50 minutes of sleep and like I remember those days I remember not being able to sleep through the night and just being so paranoid um if I would get too hot and I would wake up and be like oh my gosh I'm so hot my blood sugar must be low and I would check it and then I'd be like oh no I'm just warm you know I'm just like normal human warm from like having too many covers on or something or um if I would you know start to drift into a bad mood or something I would think oh gosh gosh my blood sugar must be high or low and it's like nope I'm just in an annoyed mood because I am annoyed you know like um uh man like the tired one really

[00:31:05] Rob Howe: uh I related to that like sometimes I was like oh wow I had a really long day I'm really tired and And then I'll start to drift off. And I'm like, wait, do I need to check my blood sugar? And then I can just look at my watch, which I stopped wearing the watch because it's just too many notifications from the rest of my life. I'll check the phone or my pump and be like, oh, I need to pump myself up a little bit. My blood sugar is a little bit low. And now for the last couple of weeks, I've been on auto mode on the Medtronic 670G, which has its own settings that you kind of have to get used to. But the biggest thing is it like totally eliminated all my lows, which I didn't even realize I. And I mean, that's not a that's not clinically like FDA approved statement. But I personally, Rob Howe, did not have any lows my first two weeks on the on the pump because it warns you before you go low and it'll suspend the pump. And it's designed to keep you in range. And I didn't realize how many lows I used to get. It was crazy. so you know you were talking about um you know not remembering some of the stuff from your diagnosis because you know when your blood sugar is high you don't have the best mental clarity kind of the same with going low you know you miss some details and i really i felt so much more engaged consistently um and especially because i came off of uh 30 days with uh living on over the counter so r and n and i was just bouncing between 250 like oh my good gracious Every day I was riding the roller coaster. And so, you know, going from that to just very steady had a tremendous, like profound impact on everything else in my life.

[00:32:50] Celia Johnson: it yeah it's when you are I mean and honestly like my blood sugar is a roller coaster a lot of the time but when you are able to or when I am able to have it be steady it is pretty astonishing the mental clarity that comes with that and um and just feeling like a quote-unquote normal person because I eat really well. I actually do health coaching now, so I'm on top of that stuff all the time. But when you're not, when that roller coaster is a really boring roller coaster, like when you'd never want to ride in a theme park because it's so flatline, it just, it feels so good.

[00:33:35] Rob Howe: It does. And like you said, the mental clarity is the biggest thing for me. It just gives me that relief, A, that I don't have to worry about it, And B, you know, the extra energy that, you know, even if it's only 5% or 10% more, you know, just from not having to fight that daily battle. And like you said earlier in the interview, knowing that, you know, type 1 diabetes is always on, any little edge that you can get on it is always going to pay off.

[00:34:02] Celia Johnson: Definitely. Definitely.

[00:34:03] Rob Howe: So I do want to focus kind of and get back to a little bit more about you. talk to us about wild child in the tree t1d and how that listening to that interview

[00:34:15] Celia Johnson: turned into this project for you sure gosh well um so i actually only added t1d to my instagram handle a couple of weeks ago which is sort of funny um it's been that recent since i started to really fully engage and want people to know up front, oh, she's diabetic. I've actually had friends who were like, why do you even tell people you're diabetic? And I'm like, why not? It's part of who I am. It's not all of who I am, but I really want to be part of that community. And so when I first started out my master's degree, it's a master's in leadership for sustainability through the University of Vermont, which is actually where I went to school and started the freestyle snowboard team there. And I went back to do my master's thinking that I wanted to quote unquote, like increase diversity in the outdoor industry. And for the first year of our program, we were asked to kind of steepen the uncertainty and really listen to where we were called to and where we could serve our community, like our community, a community we were already sort of part of and not help, but really serve, like really be there to, um, to make a positive difference that wasn't undermining what was going on. Um, and not something where we would just like up and leave after the master's was done, something that we were super passionate about. And so after listening to that podcast and having a few just really brief interactions with other type 1 diabetics here in Nevada, I realized that, well, also another part of it was I was struggling really hard with a lot of depression and anxiety just because I had, it felt like I had nowhere to turn to, um, when things were bad. And at the same time, sorry, it's, it's very multi-layer as I'm sure most people's lives are. At the same time, I was really, really, really sick. I could barely get out of bed, which kind of led to the depression. It wasn't depression causing me to not get out of bed. It was like there was something wrong, um, which turned out to be Graves disease and my kidneys, um, Graves diseases of the thyroid, but my kidneys were starting to fail. And, uh, but it took almost two years to diagnose me with Graves disease and to finally get on medication. And so, um, I just was so sick and had no, like no one to talk to about it. Like I would talk to people, but it's really hard to truly empathize with a story if, if you haven't kind of experienced it in some way. And so those very brief moments when I would talk to someone with type 1 diabetes and actually kind of like lean into that side of myself. And then I heard that podcast. It was kind of just a coming together of, there was no way to ignore it, that my calling was not to continue to work in the outdoor industry, but to really focus on what was going on internally with me and focus on my health and then thereby kind of be able to help other people live their best lives. And so I worked for Patagonia for seven years helping to run their corporate sales department, which was amazing. I loved it there, but it was really hard to focus on my own health. And so I ended up leaving there and switching my master's project to creating, co-creating a community, an in-person community for women with type 1 diabetes. And then I started working for this really great company called Arbonne. So I do health and wellness coaching through them, which means I can work from anywhere or internationally if I wanted to. And so all of that kind of happened just within the last year. And it's 180 flipped my world into this space of really focusing on my own health and then also being able to just serve the diabetic community. And so, for example, like with our, the Northern, the Northern Nevada women's type 1 community, having that community really serve the members. And so there's this one great girl from Tahoe who wanted experience blogging. And so her role in the community is she's going to be our blogger and blog about her own lived experience and what we do as a group. And so, yeah, that's kind of where I am now.

[00:39:06] Rob Howe: Well, and I think it's super cool, you know, to sort of find that path and you talk about the layers to sort of unpack those and realize, you know, what a complex journey we're all on.

[00:39:18] Celia Johnson: Yeah, it's definitely not linear at all.

[00:39:21] Rob Howe: It's not. And it's OK for it to not be linear. things don't always work out the way we plan and that is good because sort of in my improv life I get to see this on a regular basis because I teach level one which is the first obviously the first level so people who often have no experience and they'll come in and they'll try to plan and they'll try to come into a scene or into an idea with every step fully planned out right but someone else steps in there with them and they don't they haven't communicated about it there's no there's no way that they can know what's inside their brain and they start to plan and then when it doesn't go according to the plan they get frustrated and they try to force it and then it doesn't there's no context it doesn't sound right it doesn't it doesn't get it so trying to get them to let go of that plan and build something together and sort of just react and be proactive in the same moment. Seeing that light kind of turn on for people is what I really love. But I think there's a lot of parallels to just living your life in general and saying, hey, you can think you have this all planned out as much as you want, but that doesn't mean it's true. It's going to unfold the way it unfolds, whether you planned it that way or not.

[00:40:38] Celia Johnson: exactly and you know it's really so I realize you asked me about wild child in the tree too and I didn't even touch on that at all actually but when you were talking about teaching so my leather work I actually I teach leather classes um so I've been working with leather for about 10 years it's so I'm in front of people all the time um you know and I teach level one just intro to leather at this really cool place called The Generator here in Reno. It's really associated with Burning Man. They're amazing. They kind of let me teach whatever class I want to creatively express, which is great. And so I use a lot of the profits from the leather bags that I make to directly go back into my time and the things that we do for our diabetes community. Um, and you know, because I'm still in school too. So, uh, but yeah, I've been working with leather for 10 years and it just is such a, I love it. There's something so, um, relaxing about being able to design and create and create like the perfect piece. I do a lot of custom work for people. So sitting down and designing, um, something that they'll be able to carry with them for decades, hopefully. I try to, I call it heirloom leather because I want it to be something that can withstand time and be passed down to their children or somebody else over decades.

[00:42:17] Rob Howe: And that's so cool. I think that a lot of people will look at leather work and maybe I'm making generalization here, but you look at leather work and it's like, wow, this is really expensive or, you know, quality of like a leather piece. But then you realize it's not a purchase. It's an investment. And it gets better over time.

[00:42:37] Celia Johnson: Yeah. The great thing with leather is that like the way that it ages, it just it gets more interesting and unique the more that you use it, the way that it breaks in. And especially the particular type of leather that I use. I use a lot of saddle leather. So it's not going to break down anytime soon. And the more coffee and water and oil you spill on it, it just gets more and more beautiful. There's, I don't know, there's just something so special to me. I remember when I was younger, my mom showed me this coach bag that, you know, we weren't wealthy by any means, but she had this coach bag from a long, long time ago. And I remember seeing it and just thinking like how beautiful it was, even though it was already so old, but just thinking how I wanted that bag when I got older. And that's sort of where the heirloom leather came from, because I don't really like participating in fast fashion. I don't I don't agree with that industry and the capitalism and consumerism of it. And so I want to create things that people are so proud of to carry, just like art pieces that they that they have with them that makes them want to go do something.

[00:43:50] Rob Howe: it's interesting um talking about fast fashion or fashion in general because i don't often get to talk about it on my podcast but that's like one of my main in terms of time the time spent i spend a lot of time thinking about fashion and even though you would see me on the street it's like i'm wearing a hoodie and jeans 95 of the time uh the amount of time and thought i put into those pieces uh is is is has i don't know it's it's embarrassing and also just like a like a hundred percent obsession because each one of the hoodies that i wear on a regular basis i have like they're all made in the u.s and they're made they're really heirloom knitwear french terry and like i know how it's milled i know where it comes from and i study and i think about it and i waste a ton of time nerding out about it but i also know that i'm still going to wear it in 20 years and embarrass my kids by being the dad who wears the same hoodie from 20 years ago um because i because that's the i don't know that's what i i learned i read maybe four three or four years ago i read this article in gq i think and it was talking about how to spend your money on clothes because fast fashion and you know h&m and forever 21 are all you know blowing up and and still are to a certain extent. And there are small mom and pop fast fashion brands that pop up all the time with one model or another. And the article basically said, take the money that you spent on clothes the previous year and spend the same amount the next year, but buy three times fewer clothes.

[00:45:34] Celia Johnson: Exactly, exactly. That makes 100% sense. because you're not, I'm not in any way saying opt out of the fashion world. Believe me. I mean, I worked for Patagonia, like a, um, a clothing company and I've made a lot of my own clothes. Like it is a huge part of my life, but I just choose now to spend my like hard earned money on things that will last. And, um, I really value my sister-in-law Val or Rivia. She, um, a lot of times will she, when she'll move, she'll only bring like a backpack with her of like all of her belongings but those belongings like are the ones that truly make her happy and she loves them and spent you know a little bit more money on them but she's going to keep them forever unless they get stolen like they did one time which is horrible well and i think i mean

[00:46:25] Rob Howe: you can't control like thievery right that's like the worst thing right is so bad but i think that that idea and that mentality of spend money on quality things and and if you're going to spend it you you would want to buy something good i mean that's just innately i think a good consumer practice and yet we throw that all away for quick things all the time in fashion i think it's interesting when you you can tell the difference between something that's quality and made with care and precision and design versus something that was just mass produced. Oh, yeah. I think a lot of people maybe just and maybe I'm just speaking for guys here who don't think about clothes very often. And when you look at the stitching and you look at the craftsmanship, there really is a huge difference. And for me, I'm a huge person. I'm a tall guy. So fitting clothes, especially fast fashion, like I can't wear clothes from there's a list of 10 or 15 stores that I can't wear because they, their patterns are boxy and short and they just don't fit my body. So for me, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to spend a little bit more on each individual piece. And man, like the fit is so much better. And I just feel like, oh, I feel like myself in this because I know it's made well and it fits me. And I, you know, I'll never go back and that'll be my curse for all time. I'll just have to continue to buy expensive hoodies, but I'm going to do it with, uh, gladly because I know what the alternative is. And wouldn't you rather have like three hoodies

[00:47:58] Celia Johnson: that you love and you can open your closet and grab any of them, put them on and feel amazing as opposed to opening your closet like so many of us do and being like, well, I have 15 hoodies and I feel frumpy in all of them, you know, 100 percent. Yeah. And I love I just wanted to like mention that it's funny because so many of these things that I, you know, I could probably say like, I had an epiphany one day and blah, blah, blah. But like, truthfully, these are all things that like my parents ingrained in me when I was very young, like eating super healthy and not, you know, and not partaking in the fast fashion, like capitalism kind of experience. They're all things that they taught me when I was little, that I just, you know, I resisted for so long and then finally one day was like, oh yeah, okay, I guess you're right. It just was so many of those lessons that they taught and ingrained. I had to come to the realization myself.

[00:49:01] Rob Howe: And isn't that true of most lessons, right? Yeah. There's a time where it's just like it'll click for you. And I think for people kind of shifting back a little bit to diabetes, if you're if it hasn't clicked for you yet, that's OK.

[00:49:17] Celia Johnson: Absolutely, because I feel like for a lot of people there there is that time when it just starts to finally click. The more and more I speak to people, it feels like it's one of those things that a lot of people resisted, not necessarily actively, but like. didn't quite come into their own in diabetes, like accepting it for a long time. I mean, for me, 15 years, you know, I took care of myself, but I, I didn't like, I didn't really blossom and like, kind of come out as a diabetic. Actually, I was speaking to one of my advisors about that, like come out as diabetic until really this year, which is seems insane, but like, that's just my

[00:50:03] Rob Howe: journey. So, and that's okay. I mean, everybody's journey is different. I think, yeah, in that same, in that same kind of mindset, I want to ask you a question that I ask on every episode, because I think, you know, I want to, I want you to keep that at the forefront of your mind that, you know, your journey is your journey, but you know, you knowing what you know now, what advice would you give? If you're in an airport and they were about to close the door to your gate, you had maybe 30 seconds, and for whatever reason, you can't miss that flight, but you run into somebody, maybe you see some pump tubing, you run into somebody with type 1 who's either been recently diagnosed or is struggling with their type 1, what's the one thing that you tell them in that quick 30-second interaction?

[00:50:50] Celia Johnson: call me can you tell them like hey let's stay in touch you're not alone in this of course yeah because I think that's what I would say is like just having them know like there is someone to reach out to in those moments well to celebrate the wins with but also if they're struggling um I think that's what I would tell them is like just reach out to me you're not alone

[00:51:16] Rob Howe: and I think that's super important I mean there's people answer that question a lot of different ways. And I think yours is, it fits in a category of, Hey, I give him my business card or I get on the cell phone or I missed the flight because that one, that in that moment, that connection and needing to know that you're not alone is just vital. And I think it's, it is super important. If there's no, if there's nothing else that any of this advocacy gets people on the line is that you are not alone in your struggle. And, you know, what do you tell people? What would you tell them? Oh man, I think mine is use your voice because I was quiet for a long time and I didn't know how much I needed this community. And, you know, much like you, I think, you know, I didn't realize even clinically what benefits it would have for me just knowing that there are other people out there to interact with. So yeah, I would say use your voice. Don't, because, you Ultimately, we are all responsible for how involved we are. People ask me a lot, oh, how are you so involved? How are you so involved? And I think the answer is the question. I just am very involved. And I think...

[00:52:27] Celia Johnson: Yeah, you make a choice.

[00:52:29] Rob Howe: Right. And the choice that I would tell people to make is speak up, find that community, whether it's Instagram or it's Facebook or it's going to JDRF meetups or beyond type 1 meetups or whatever it is, that's the way, you know, whatever that community is for you, that's the way that you should go. And it's different for everyone.

[00:52:53] Celia Johnson: Yeah. And so often it's like just a starting point to like just choose one place to start. And once you start on that path, like, I mean, the path is goes forever. Like you can take it in so many directions.

[00:53:10] Rob Howe: Not to go too stoic, but the obstacle is the way, you know?

[00:53:13] Celia Johnson: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Just like taking that first step is so often the hardest, getting the momentum going.

[00:53:22] Rob Howe: It really is. And but but when you do it, the momentum kind of continues to really spark and fall and you can kind of put one foot in front of the other. And and before you know it, you look back down the road, you're like, wow, this I'm a totally new person now.

[00:53:37] Celia Johnson: Absolutely. I fully agree with that.

[00:53:40] Rob Howe: well Celia thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today you are just a breath of fresh air and I think it feels like I've known you for a long time and we really only chatted for about an hour so thank you so much for what you're doing in the community both locally and online and it's great to meet somebody else who grew up in a small town and didn't have any type 1 friends and didn't have all the great resources and see what you've become from that and how you've spread that message.

[00:54:11] Celia Johnson: Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.

[00:54:14] Rob Howe: And we will be in touch soon. I know we've mentioned your handle, wildchildinthetree, T1D. That's, I assume, the best way to get in touch with you if our listeners want to connect.

[00:54:26] Celia Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. And my email address is also just wildchildinthetree at gmail.com. But yeah, DMs, as many diabetics have their, CGM on their phone, which means I have my phone in my hand almost every minute. People actually think it's weird how quickly I respond to text messages. And I'm like, well, I'm glued to my phone because of diabetes. So yeah, feel free to reach out. And I hope that this interview brought some light into some people's lives.