In less than twenty-four hours, I will be surrounded by my tribe.

Friends for Life, the premier conference for families with Type 1 children (and some of us Type 1s who are children at heart), is going on in Orlando for the next few days. It’s the one conference that no one will ask you if you can eat that, look at your pump and wonder aloud if it’s a pager, or want you arrested if you say you’re high and pull out a needle.

The tribe grows larger this year. I’m honored to be on a morning panel for the first ever Diabetes Advocates MasterLab - a full day session discussing the importance of advocacy and how everyone touched by diabetes can be an advocate. What’s special about this is that we’ll have Type 1 and Type 2s together, along with the parents and grandparents of Type 1s (with some of them being Type 2s themselves). The more encompassing the tribe is, the more powerful it becomes.

For as horrible as this disease is, there is comfort in the solidarity of the tribe. Complete strangers give knowing nods in passing, acknowledging green bracelets signifying Type 1 diabetes on each others’ wrists. When a Dexcom trill goes off in a room, twenty people look down to see if it’s theirs. Someone has a low blood sugar? A torrent of glucose tabs rains down upon them.

There is such comfort in being with others who understand the silent wish as a meter counts down to a number. There is such joy in celebrating the new, squishy babies of T1 moms. There is even such pain as the tears flow when a fellow T1 speaks aloud your innermost fears. We are bound together by blood. And nonfunctioning pancreases.

The dream of The Diabetes UnConference came out of last year’s attendance at Friends For Life. I learned so much, but it was the moments of “life discussions” outside of the meeting rooms that sparked so much of what has now become a part of me. This year’s Friends For Life will continue to be a catalyst in how I live and be an inspiration of who I want to be.

I am eagerly awaiting the open arms of the tribe that no one ever wanted to join.

My friends.

My d-family.

My tribe.