I was reading Vivian's blog the other day and she talked about finding peace when you deal with chronic illness. She deals with two - her son has type 1 and her husband has MS. She's a woman with an awful lot on her plate and she spoke of how she wished she could just accept her lot in life, make peace with the hand she was dealt. I responded on her blog, but it got me thinking.

I don't know if you can ever totally make peace with your lot in life. In fact, I don't think that you should. You can accept it for what it is - your life - but you can still be pissed off about it at times and cry about it at times and blog about it at times. I don't think people should just meekly accept things. I think getting dealt a bum hand completely allows you to rage about it.

Not wallow - I'm not talking about sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, although sometimes you do just need to have a little pity party. But once that party's over, you need to get good and pissed off. I think being pissed off about something is highly underrated. Get pissed off! It's a great way to motivate yourself to do something, to struggle against your particular problem - in my case, my daughter's diabetes.

I think that struggle to get out from under it by raising funds or by blogging and speaking to others about it or just by having a big, public hissy fit once in a while is what helps propel things like cures and better treatments. Even if you aren't directly involved in treatment options or cures, your voice is out there saying "I've had ENOUGH! Something needs to change!"

If everyone just accepted that X, Y and Z were their lot, nothing would get done. It's people who rage against that, in whatever way they can, that fuels the fires.