As I was driving home from my dad's last night, Olivia and I started talking about her dad. He's not exactly a role model-type guy and they've had a very rocky relationship for the last two plus years.

The conversation started off discussing my concerns about The Bug and Olivia commented that she didn't think the other girls could get diabetes since it didn't run in the family. I said that we didn't know that, given that her father's side of the family has an obsession with hiding the facts. After a brief discussion of her grandfather's parentage and the fact that most of his family, and her grandmother's, for that matter, were still in Ireland, she told me that a comment her dad made years ago had stuck with her for a long time.

He had said that he thought that Olivia's having diabetes was the worst thing in the world, that he couldn't imagine a worse disease and he was really upset that she had it. He said this to her when she was about five. In her mind, at the time, she took it to mean that it was somehow her fault that she had diabetes, that she had done something to make herself get it.

To say that I was appalled would be an understatement. She knows now that it wasn't her fault, that no one causes type 1, but when she was five she didn't know that. It breaks my heart to think that she walked around for a couple of years, thinking it was her fault, thinking that somehow her little three year-old self had done something bad to bring this upon herself.

It's pointless now to say that I wish she'd talked about it with me back then because she wouldn't have - she wouldn't have wanted to badmouth her dad (we were in the middle of a divorce at the time). I think she might have been afraid I would have confirmed that it was her fault or something.

I guess I didn't realize how much she internalized things. She's always been the type of kid to mull things over, sometimes for months, before talking about them and we've been working on that. I'm sure she hasn't stewed about this for all that time; I think the concern over The Bug was what brought it out. But still. I obviously need to make more of an effort to tease these feelings out of her, without being the nosy, nagging mum. Something else to work on in my spare time.