Assessment of recollections and providing acknowledgement of illness beliefs are ways in which clinicians can begin to tap patients’ legacies of diabetes and help them disclose beliefs about the controllability and consequences of diabetes. Consideration of how a legacy shapes an individual’s perception of stigma and inhibits communication about diabetes at home and with family can help clinicians tailor interventions to improve adherence. Given that primary care clinicians often care for multiple generations simultaneously, an intervention that takes into account transmissible health-related legacies could potentially influence the next generation’s perceptions of diabetes by changing problematic illness epresentations that impede glycemic control.