My grandmother had type 2 diabetes since before I was born. We were all very aware of it because she controlled it mostly through her diet. We knew she couldn't eat sweetened foods or if she did it was a tiny bit as a treat; rarely more than a mouthful. As far as I'm aware, she never developed any of the bad complications that come with having diabetes and she didn't even start using any medication to treat it until at least well into her 70s, perhaps not even until her 80s when she went into a residential home. She died in 2002 at the age of 86 and maintained her physical health well until around 2000 when she went into the aged care home.

People are communal. It's always been to our advantage to be as it's easier for us to survive when we work in groups. It seems that even on a subconscious level we are driven to maintain group connections. We strive to fit in, don't tolerate loneliness and our mental health suffers when we are isolated. There is even evidence that our immune system functions better when we are surrounded by people we trust.

The other day my daughter and I were talking to an acquaintance. He's a friendly, outgoing type who connects easily with people and gets quite enthusiastic with talking about what he's been up to. As he continued to chat avidly to me, my daughter left to carry on with the activities we were there for and I joined her a bit later. I jokingly asked her if she'd lost interest in what he was regaling us with and she surprised me somewhat with the response she gave. She actually felt he was being rude because he kept interrupting me whenever I tried to add to the conversation and would get distracted and go off on another tangent of his own.

A friend of mine shared a post on Facebook about forgiving our parents for the mistakes they made and and pain they may have caused. I know that for her this is part of her healing journey to let go of stress in her life and heal past traumas in order to heal from cancer in the present. However, it obviously hit a sore spot for someone else who read it and their angry response was that some people don't deserve our forgiveness and it's not fair or reasonable to ask us to forgive them.

Have you ever gone outside and felt the sun on you then felt a sense of peace, relief or happiness?Years ago when someone had a long term illness that doctors struggled to treat they would recommend the patient spend time in the country air. The most obvious way this would have helped is having them move away from the pollution of the cities, but could there be more to it than just that?

When I was growing up they started using the generational title of Baby Boomers to describe my parent's generation born in the post WW2 baby boom. Then my generation (my parents had us young) kind of got dubbed with the title generation X in order to differentiate. In my teens we had a new generation starting, so by default it went into alphabetical order and they were generation Y, later to become known as Millennials due to the fact that the new millennium would be when they hit adulthood.