Diaversary Cards

I know that Diaversary is not a holiday that many of you are familiar with. I think it is actually a word that my Diabetes support group made up. I know I had never heard of it a year ago.

But it doesn’t matter if it was made up or not. To many of us diabetic families, the diaversary is a very important day in our lives.

This is the day that our child or loved one was diagnosed with diabetes. It was the day when our lives were changed forever.

It is a bittersweet day.

A day of gladness that our child or loved one is still alive. Of thankfulness for the ability to keep them alive. And a day of celebration for making it through one more year, hopefully healthier than the year before.

But it is also a day of sorrow. A day of remembering the trauma that we went through when our child or loved one was sick enough to have to go to the hospital and get diagnosed. A day when we mourn the loss of a healthy pancreas. A day we grieve over the trials that our child or loved one now faces as they struggle to keep healthy, normal lives.

For some, this is day is harder than for others. We all deal with it in our own ways.

One of our diabetes instructors told us that having a child diagnosed with a chronic illness (a deadly chronic illness) like diabetes, is much like losing a child. Yes, you are lucky that you have that child. But there is a grieving process that continues over and over and over again as you deal with new challenges, as you face the difficulties that diabetes brings, and as you see some of the things that diabetes gets in the way of your child doing. (And this is a mother who has lost a child from something other than diabetes.)

So back to the Diaversary cards. A wonderful woman in our group thought that it would be a nice gesture to send one another cards on our child’s diaversary. Something little to let them know that we are thinking about them, to encourage them, and to congratulate them on making it through another year of living with this disease.

What an awesome idea! Right?

And we got tons of wonderful cards in the mail for S’s diaversary (that just passed on September 6th). But in trying to find cards that I liked to send to other people in the group…well, lets just say that it is hard to find kid friendly, encouraging cards that are not associated with birthdays.

But I hate to give up!

So here is my solution. I created several different cards that can be printed right from your own computer!

All of the artwork is either from my Printshop program or were found on Wizmaya Design Studio for free. None of them are licensed to sell. They are for personal use only.

To use them, you will need either a photo editing program or you need a program like Word. I saved them all in jpeg format so that you should be able to open them on any computer.

The easiest way to use a program like Word (that does not have a card making option where you insert your pictures) is to start with a blank document. For all but one of them you would want to have the document set to landscape. On the far right half of the blank document you are going to place your outside photo. Make sure you adjust it so that it fits nicely in the right half only. I made the files so that they measure 4 X 6 which may or may not fit perfectly in your document. Adjust and figure out what works best for you. You can always cut your paper down to size when you are done.

On the next page of your document you are going to place your inside image again on the right side of the page.

Make sure that you do a trial run of this before you do the actual finished copy (use a grayscale or reduced ink, depending on your printer, copy first). But you are going to print the first page, flip your paper to the backside (assuming you don’t have a printer that does double sides) and print on the back. You should end up with a card that when folded has the outside image on the front and then when you open it up it will have the inside image.

This might be a bit tricky to figure out at first. Don’t worry it you mess it up the first time. Just keep playing with your settings until you figure out how to get it perfect with your software and your printer.

Don’t have a printer? Try an online photo company like Shutterfly or Snapfish (I do not endorse either company). I believe that you can make your own photo cards on either website for fairly cheap. All you do is plug in the photos and they will print them for you! This may cost a bit more money than printing at home but you are going to get great results and professional looking cards for pretty cheap. I know I have gotten some from one of those two companies that cost me less than $.20 a card! Considering how much a card in the store costs, that is a bargain!

If you have any questions, or come across some free clip art that you think would be great for another card, leave me a comment. I plan on making more of these as time permits. And I hope that you are able to use and enjoy them!

Blessings,

PS. Even if you don’t have a diabetic in your life, there are a few cards in there that might still work for you! I have a couple in which I left off the “Happy Diaversary” that would still be cute to send to a loved one. Please, do not feel as though you have to send these to diabetics only!