So, this is 2020? How are you going? I returned from overseas to a country literally burning and choked in smoke; a government that is refusing to accept that climate change is real; and a news organisation making up the narrative to suit themselves (arsonists are everywhere, apparently).

Bet you didn’t expect me to get so political before midday on a Monday!

Today is my first day back at work after three weeks of holidays in New York with my family. We spent the time basically relocating our Melbourne life to New York: finding a favourite café that served decent coffee, drinking great quantities of said coffee, wandering the streets, playing with (other people’s) dogs, warming up in bookstores and catching up with friends. It was the perfect way to farewell 2019 and welcome 2020.

As I have mentioned a million times before, I don’t do resolutions. You may not know this, but I live with diabetes, and that in itself gives me enough reasons to not reach goals and targets. I don’t need to add another list of things of which to fall short.

For the last three years, I’ve chosen a word that I’ve hoped would oversee and direct my way of thinking and acting for the year. As it turns out, that was a load of rubbish. Because each time, as I searched for the word that I wanted to guide me, the one I settled on went against the very grain of who I am.

The words were pause, focus and reset – and behind them was the idea that I would respond in ways that were really out of character; words that would silence or calm my natural responses.

But that’s not me. I walk towards things (usually at pace), I’m impulsive, I’m reactive. Sure, these may not necessarily be the best traits for a mindful, calm existence, and they can be exhausting, but welcome to my life: Hi, I’m Renza.

This year, I’m ditching the word idea, and using a phrase that better suits me, and that phrase is Stand Up.

We are living in a world that does not need people to be silent. Manners are all very important, but it is very possible to have manners and be polite, but still challenge things that we see as not right. We don’t need to be told how to think, how to feel, how to respond to something that upsets us. We don’t need to tone police ourselves – or others. We don’t need to accept what we are given.

And in the diabetes space, we don’t need people to be meek and mild. We need people who are disrupters and who speak their minds and who call out the bullshit. We definitely need to make sure that the voice of PWD is the loudest in the room, and that anyone who tries, even for a second on any platform, to tell us to pipe down is called out for it.

We do not need people to go quietly, and I am somewhat horrified that I did just that at the end of last year when I was feeling intimidated and vulnerable online. If I’m honest, I don’t recognise the person who switched her Twitter to private and wrote this thread to explain it to the people who were asking why.

Being angry is okay because there is a lot to get angry about in diabetes care. Not standing up means that we accept the situation for how it is. We can do it in a way that is nice and friendly, but sometimes it takes more than that. And that is okay.

I have never cared about being popular in the DOC or being considered one of the cool kids. I have never worried about follower numbers. I searched for this community because I needed support and I needed to feel part of something amongst people who were just life me. Other people with diabetes.

When I re-read my twitter thread from before Xmas, my heart broke NOT at what had happened; but at how I felt that the only way for me to stop feeling so unsafe was to turn away from the community – MY community. It was this tweet that set my tears running again:

I thought that if I had wandered into the DOC for the first time instead of the welcoming place it was, I saw PWD being challenged, I would have run away. THAT was what broke my heart – the very idea that I would not have discovered people like Kerri, Georgie, Cherise, Melissa, Mike, Dana, Grumps, David, Manny, Jeff, Mel, Frank, Alanna, Kelly, Ashleigh, Scott, Annie, Alecia, Bastian, Daniela and so, so many others. I don’t know how I would have navigated the murky waters of life with diabetes without those people: MY people for whom diabetes actually invades our DNA and the DNA of our loved ones. People there for the right reasons – not for the accolades, not for increasing follower counts. They are community-minded, open to opposing ideas and thoughts, and don’t consider themselves superheroes.

If I had have gone quietly, I would never have learnt from them; never had the support of people who understand; never had people like that at my back when I do stand up.

So, I don’t go quietly ever again. I stand up as I always have. I accept that doing that will send me into periods of advocacy burnout; I’ll deal with that when it happens, surrounded my friends and peers who get it.

So yes, this is 2020. I’m back. It’s really nice to see you here.