The dangers we didn't understand, the family history I cannot ignore, and why I'm choosing to tell their stories.

By Michelle Ann | The Healing Cheff

Three women in my family died young.

My nana was 57. My Aunt Rosemary was approximately 42. My mother was 59.

All three suffered from diabetes, and alcohol was part of their health struggles.

And then there was me.

My name is Michelle Ann, a woman in recovery.

And I became an alcoholic.

I often wonder how much we really understood about diabetes and drinking back then. We knew diabetes was serious. We knew alcohol could damage the liver. But did we understand what happened when the two came together?

Did we understand how alcohol could interfere with blood sugar? How diabetes could damage the kidneys, heart, nerves, and circulation? How drinking could make an already complicated disease even harder to manage?

I certainly didn't.

Today, I want to have that conversation.

Not to shame anyone who drinks. Not to blame my family for their illnesses. But because I watched three women I loved suffer, and I believe their stories deserve to become something more than painful memories.

They deserve to become a conversation that might save another life.

My Nana: Gone at 57

My nana was a wine drinker.

She also suffered from diabetes.

Eventually, she developed gangrene in her legs. The damage was so severe that her legs had to be amputated.

Imagine that for a moment.

Losing your ability to walk. Losing your independence. Living with a disease that slowly damages the very body carrying you through life.

And then dying at just 57 years old.

When I look back, I wonder how much we understood about diabetes, circulation, wound healing, and the dangers of drinking.

Diabetes can damage the nerves and blood vessels, especially in the feet and legs. Poor circulation and loss of sensation can allow wounds to develop without being noticed. Those wounds may become infected and, in severe cases, progress to gangrene and amputation.

Alcohol can add another layer of risk, especially when drinking is heavy or interferes with nutrition, medications, or diabetes management.

I cannot go back and change what happened to my nana.

But I can speak about what happened to her.

Because somewhere today, another woman with diabetes may be drinking wine every evening without understanding how alcohol affects her blood sugar.

And I want her to know that asking questions about her health could change her future.

My Aunt Rosemary: Gone at Approximately 42

My Aunt Rosemary was three years older than my mother.

She died around November 1985, when my daughter was just two years old.

She was approximately 42.

Forty-two years old.

She suffered from diabetes, hepatitis, and cirrhosis of the liver.

Cirrhosis is severe scarring of the liver. It can develop from several causes, including chronic viral hepatitis, heavy alcohol use, and certain metabolic liver diseases.

I know alcohol was part of my aunt's story, but I also know that hepatitis can independently cause serious liver damage.

What strikes me today is how young she was.

Forty-two.

An age when so many women are raising children, building careers, planning futures, and believing they still have decades ahead of them.

My Aunt Rosemary didn't get those decades.

Her story reminds me that serious liver disease does not always announce itself loudly in the beginning.

Sometimes the damage develops over years before someone realizes how sick they have become.

And that is why understanding your liver health, your drinking, and your family medical history matters.

My Mother: Gone at 59

My mother was born May 18, 1947.

She died in September 2006, at 59 years old.

She suffered from diabetes, kidney failure, and liver disease.

She was receiving dialysis when she suffered a heart attack.

Twenty years later, I still think about what her body endured.

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of chronic kidney disease. Over time, high blood sugar can damage the small blood vessels in the kidneys, reducing their ability to filter waste from the blood.

Diabetes also increases the risk of heart disease.

And when someone develops kidney failure, the heart and circulation can face even greater strain.

My mother's medical problems were serious and interconnected.

Alcohol was also part of her health history.

When I look back at her life, I don't want to reduce her to her illnesses or the choices she made.

She was my mother.

A woman with a story, a family, struggles, and a life that mattered.

But I also don't want to remain silent about the diseases that contributed to her death.

Because silence doesn't educate the next generation.

Understanding does.

And Then There Was Me

Here is where this story becomes personal in a different way.

I grew up around these illnesses.

I witnessed the suffering.

I knew diabetes existed in my family.

And yet, I became an alcoholic.

I didn't begin drinking with the intention of developing alcoholism. I don't believe most people do.

In the beginning, alcohol seemed to offer something.

A feeling. An escape. A way to relax, celebrate, or temporarily change how I felt.

But alcoholism is progressive.

And what began as drinking eventually became something I could no longer manage on my own.

I spent years trying to understand why I could stop drinking for periods of time but couldn't remain stopped.

I could put time together without alcohol, but when I returned to drinking, I returned to the same destructive patterns.

I had to learn that simply removing alcohol was not enough for me.

I needed recovery.

I needed to change how I lived, how I thought, how I responded to life, and how I cared for myself.

I came in to recovery 2012. My sobriety date is January 11, 2022.

And today, I can look at my family history through a different set of eyes.

Not with shame.

Not with judgment.

But with awareness.

I cannot change the generations before me. But I can take responsibility for the choices I make today.

Diabetes and Alcohol: What Happens Inside the Body?

Let's talk about something I wish more families understood.

When you have diabetes, your body either does not produce enough insulin or cannot use insulin effectively.

Insulin helps glucose move from your bloodstream into your cells, where it can be used for energy.

When blood sugar remains too high over time, it can damage blood vessels and nerves throughout the body.

Now introduce alcohol.

Your liver has several important responsibilities, including helping regulate blood sugar.

When you drink, your liver prioritizes processing alcohol. This can interfere with its ability to release glucose into your bloodstream.

For someone with diabetes, particularly someone taking insulin or certain diabetes medications, this can lead to dangerously low blood sugar.

And here's something many people don't realize.

Low blood sugar can happen hours after drinking, including while you're sleeping.

Symptoms may include sweating, shakiness, confusion, dizziness, weakness, and, in severe cases, seizures or loss of consciousness.

Some symptoms of low blood sugar can even resemble intoxication.

Imagine someone assuming you're simply drunk when your blood sugar is dangerously low.

That misunderstanding could delay lifesaving treatment.

Alcohol can also affect blood sugar differently depending on what you drink, how much you consume, whether you've eaten, and what medications you take.

Sweet cocktails, for example, may initially raise blood sugar because of their carbohydrate content, while alcohol can still increase the risk of a later drop.

This is why drinking with diabetes is not as simple as counting the sugar in your glass.

What About the Liver, Kidneys, and Heart?

Heavy alcohol use can damage the liver and contribute to fatty liver disease, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis.

Diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes, is also associated with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, formerly called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

When liver disease and alcohol-related damage occur together, the health consequences can become more complicated.

And then there are the kidneys.

Diabetes can damage the kidneys over time. Heavy drinking may add indirect risks through high blood pressure, dehydration, and other health problems.

The heart matters, too.

Diabetes increases cardiovascular risk, while heavy alcohol use can contribute to high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, and heart muscle damage.

Not everyone with diabetes who drinks will develop these complications.

And not every case of cirrhosis, kidney failure, or heart disease is caused by alcohol.

But when someone is already living with diabetes, alcohol deserves serious attention.

Especially when there is a family history of liver disease, kidney failure, heart disease, or alcohol use disorder.

We Talk About Sugar. But What About What's in Your Glass?

This is the conversation I really want to have.

How many times have you heard someone with diabetes say they need to stop eating bread?

Or give up sweets?

Or watch their carbohydrates?

We talk about rice, tortillas, desserts, soda, and sugar.

And those conversations can be important.

But how often do we ask about alcohol?

What about the wine with dinner?

The cocktails on the weekend?

The drinks someone has every evening because they believe it helps them relax?

Are we talking about those?

Are we asking how alcohol affects blood sugar, medications, liver function, and long-term health?

Because diabetes management is about much more than avoiding sweets.

It includes nutrition, movement, medications when needed, blood sugar monitoring, sleep, regular medical care, and understanding the effects of alcohol.

And for someone struggling with alcohol dependence, it also means recognizing that simply telling them to stop drinking may not be enough.

They may need medical treatment, recovery support, and a safe plan.

If someone is physically dependent on alcohol, suddenly stopping can cause dangerous withdrawal. Medical guidance is important.

What Can We Do Differently?

I cannot go back and educate my nana.

I cannot sit down with my Aunt Rosemary and explain what I understand today.

I cannot change my mother's medical history.

But we can do something with the information available to us now.

We can begin by being honest with ourselves and our healthcare providers about how much we drink.

Not how much we wish we drank.

Not how much we think sounds acceptable.

But how much we actually consume.

If you have diabetes, ask your healthcare provider how alcohol may interact with your medications and affect your blood sugar. Ask whether avoiding alcohol is the safest choice for your particular health conditions.

Learn your A1C and what it means. Ask about your kidney function, liver enzymes, blood pressure, cholesterol, and cardiovascular risk.

If you drink and use insulin or medication that can cause low blood sugar, ask about glucose monitoring, eating safely, and recognizing delayed hypoglycemia.

And if you have numbness in your feet, poor circulation, or wounds that aren't healing, don't ignore them. Seek medical care promptly.

If drinking has become difficult to control, there is help available.

You don't have to wait until your body is failing to ask for it.

You don't have to lose everything before deciding that your health matters.

And you certainly don't have to be ashamed of needing support.

Recovery taught me that asking for help is not weakness.

Sometimes it is the very thing that saves our lives.

What Are We Passing Down to the Next Generation?

I want you to think about something.

What did you grow up believing about alcohol?

Was drinking considered normal in your family?

Was wine treated differently from liquor?

Did anyone talk about the long-term effects of drinking, or did those conversations only happen after someone became seriously ill?

Do you know your family's history of diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, or kidney failure?

And if you have diabetes today, have you ever asked your doctor how alcohol might affect your particular condition?

What would change if you began treating your health as something worth protecting before a crisis happened?

What habits have you accepted simply because they were familiar?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

What do you want the next generation to learn from your life?

I don't ask these questions to frighten anyone.

I ask them because I wish my family had more opportunities to have these conversations.

Breaking the Cycle Doesn't Mean Erasing the Past

For years, I thought about family history as something that happened before me.

Something I inherited but couldn't change.

Today, I see it differently.

Family history can tell us where we may be vulnerable.

It can help us recognize patterns.

It can encourage us to ask better questions and seek preventive care.

But family history is not a guaranteed future.

Having relatives with diabetes does not mean you are destined to experience the same complications.

Having alcoholism in your family does not mean you are destined to develop alcohol use disorder.

Our genetics, environment, experiences, and behaviors all matter.

And while we cannot control every outcome, we can make choices that support our health.

For me, one of those choices was sobriety.

But sobriety is not a guarantee that I will never develop diabetes or another illness.

It is one important way I have chosen to care for myself.

I still need to pay attention to my health, my nutrition, my family history, and my medical care.

Recovery didn't make me immune to disease.

It gave me an opportunity to become more responsible for the life I have.

Their Stories Didn't End With Their Deaths

My nana died at 57.

My Aunt Rosemary died at approximately 42.

My mother died at 59.

Three women whose lives ended far too soon.

Three women whose experiences with diabetes and alcohol-related health struggles left a lasting impression on me.

I wish I could ask them more questions.

I wish I understood then what I understand today.

And I wish they had been given more years.

But wishing cannot change the past.

What I can do is speak.

I can share what I have learned.

I can encourage another woman to ask questions about her health, her drinking, and her family history.

And I can remind someone who is struggling with alcohol that recovery is possible.

Because sometimes the most loving thing we can do for the people who came before us is learn from their lives.

And sometimes the most loving thing we can do for the generations coming after us is make different choices.

Diabetes and drinking. Let's stop treating them like two separate conversations.

Your life matters.

Your health matters.

And you do not have to wait for a tragedy to begin taking care of yourself.

With love,

Michelle Ann ✍️
A woman in recovery
The Healing Cheff

Recover. Reinvent. Rise.

TheHealingCheff.com

Health note: This article shares personal family experiences and general educational information. Alcohol's contribution to an individual's medical complications depends on their complete medical history. If you have diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease, or concerns about alcohol use, speak with a qualified healthcare professional. If you are physically dependent on alcohol, seek medical advice before stopping abruptly.

Sources for further reading

• American Diabetes Association — Diabetes and Alcohol: diabetes.org

• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases — Diabetes and Kidney Disease: niddk.nih.gov

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — Alcohol's Effects on Health: niaaa.nih.gov

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — Diabetes Complications: cdc.gov/diabetes

Since this on 12/12/25 My brother Billy died at 52. Also diabetes, soda and a drinker. His kidneys failed.