Theodora & Me

Theodora DeWolf Colt.

I whispered as my fingers skimmed the placard.

I’m partial to vintage names, often joking with my friends that I would choose them for my future children.

Ernest. Samuel. Eleanor. Marilyn. Theodora.

But it was her expression in the portrait above the mantle that piqued my interest.

Debonair. Playful. Whimsical. Haughty.

I would soon learn these were all words frequently used to describe Theodora by historians and the individuals who knew her personally.

My curiosity got the better of me.

I scoured the archives of Linden Place. Syphered through the pages of Google. Watched a very long documentary on YouTube about the history of Bristol, RI that only featured a one-minute and thirty-second clip about Theodora’s life.

(Never underestimate a millennial woman’s determination to find an Encyclopedia’s worth amount of information about a topic.)

And I discovered one key takeaway: Theodora was a woman constantly on display.

The daughter of a notorious, heinous slave trader. Christopher Colt’s wife. A widow rebuilding a life and social standing in a town that ostracized her.

She was a product of the world around her, holding onto a legacy that was never written by her.

But Theodora didn’t allow that stop her. She set out to redefine her legacy.

A legacy all her own.

A legacy where she reclaimed her childhood home of Linden Place, climbed the ranks of Bristol’s elite society without any connections to doing so, hosted abolitionists, poets, novelists, and Presidents for lavish dinner parties, wrote her own book of short stories, Stray Fancies, and inspired her son to dedicate an elementary school for her after her death.

And this made me realize that Theodora and I are not all that dissimilar.

(Which might seem like a very bold statement to make.)

But as an individual living with Type 1 Diabetes, I understand the desire to reshape a legacy. The feeling of continuously being on display. The need to change a narrative that is often attributed to you. The recognition that the story other people assign to you becomes your identity.

And just like Theodora, I have set out to reclaim my legacy.

Everything changed because of an Instagram Reel.

“If you woke up tomorrow and didn’t have Type 1 Diabetes anymore, what’s the first thing you would do?” the influencer asked, causally lounging by the beach, as if she hadn’t just blown up my entire life.

Because the truth was that in the years I had been living with the condition, I had never allowed my mind to wander into the dangerous territory of “what if”.

What if my pancreas magically decided to grow back the cells it needed to produce insulin? What if I didn’t have to calculate a series of equations before eating half a banana? What if I could simply be normal?

Hope felt dangerous. But I read the comments anyway.

I would cannonball into a pool.

I would soak in a hot tub for HOURS.

I would order a chocolate milkshake from McDonald’s.

I would leave the house with nothing but the clothes on my back.

For me, the answer was simple: I would go for a run—without worrying about my blood glucose levels crashing.

It was surprising how ordinary the desires were.

No one wanted to negotiate the boulders of Mount Everest, free solo off a building in Taipei, or fall out of an airplane at maximum velocity with only a flimsy parachute to rely on.

We just wanted to exist in the world like everyone else.

I never would have thought that a social media app would become the catalyst for my greatest moment of self-discovery. Because it wasn’t just a fleeting moment where I could imagine my life differently.

It was an epiphany.

And while the thought of having a functioning pancreas was inspiring, I realized that I didn’t have to wait for that to start living my life differently. I could be a person who existed apart from their chronic illness—where it was an extension of reality, rather than an entire identity. Type 1 Diabetes didn’t have to be the most prominent feature of my identity.

I owed it to myself to rewrite my story.

The first time that I had failed to remember I lived with a chronic illness—in a good way—was during a spontaneous vacation to Charleston, South Carolina.

It was the perfect antidote to a New England winter.

Palm trees. Pastel-colored buildings. Southern accents that were soothing compared to the roughness of Boston.

I bought a plane ticket on a whim and convinced two of my closest friends to join me.

Whether it was slipping into the Gibbs Museum of Art to dodge a torrential rain shower only to stumble upon a free pottery class where we made pinch-pots that the instructor promised she would mail to us (she never did). Or a failed attempt at prank calling our friends using the hotel’s in-room telephone since we called from a South Carolina area code and they knew we were in the state. Or ordering bottomless frozen cocktails at a restaurant that advertised wildly about them only for the Frosé machine to be broken due to the cold weather (it was 75 degrees). Or walking around the Downtown area wondering why everyone was wearing green only to remember that it was St. Patrick’s Day and discovering that Charlestonians have dueling Irish American parades.

I gradually remembered the person I was before my diagnosis. Someone who laughed easily, craved adventure, and leaned into happiness. And I realized that young girl had never left me. She was inside of me the entire time, I simply had to be willing to welcome her again.