There is something strange about standing at the edge of adulthood as a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes. For years, you have been the backup plan. The carb counter. The late-night Dexcom watcher. The one who remembers the extra infusion set, the low snacks in the glove compartment, and the glucagon at the bottom of the bag. You build your entire nervous system around keeping someone safe.
And then one day, they are almost 17.
Old enough to drive themselves to work. Old enough to stay out with friends. Old enough to start talking about college visits, dorm rooms, concerts, road trips, jobs, relationships, and futures that stretch beyond the reach of your own hands.
I did not expect this season of parenting to feel so emotional.
Not because I doubt my daughter. Quite the opposite. I trust her deeply. She is capable, resilient, smart, and stronger than I ever was at her age. But type 1 diabetes has a way of making parents quietly carry fears they do not always say out loud. The fear that something will happen when you are not there. The fear that other people will not understand. The fear that your child will have to advocate for themselves in moments when they are exhausted, overwhelmed, or simply tired of diabetes always being part of the conversation.
This week, I signed my daughter up for her senior portraits, and I cried quietly at my computer.
I found myself wanting to hear from the adults who have already lived this.
The adults with type 1 who left home.
The ones who figured out college dining halls and overnight lows and first apartments and health insurance and dating and careers and travel and all the messy parts of becoming an adult while carrying diabetes alongside them.
I want to ask you something, honestly.
How did you learn to trust yourself?
Who taught you that you would be okay?
Was there a moment when diabetes stopped feeling like the thing that controlled your future and simply became one part of your life story?
From where I sit as a parent, there are days when the future feels both beautiful and terrifying.
And yet, at every Friends for Life conference, in every hallway conversation, and in every story shared by adults living full and meaningful lives with type 1, I see so much hope ahead of us.
I see adults with type 1 raising children, running companies, traveling the world, falling in love, becoming doctors, teachers, artists, and advocates. I see people who have learned that perfection was never the goal. Living was.
That may be the wisdom I need most right now.
Not reassurance that diabetes becomes easy.
But reassurance that life still becomes big.
That may be what parents of teenagers with type 1 need to hear from adults who have already walked this road. Not just survival stories, but ordinary life stories. Stories about joy and independence and mistakes and resilience. Stories that remind us our children are not standing at the edge of something fragile. They are standing at the beginning of something meaningful.
So, if you are an adult with type 1, consider this my open letter to you.
Tell me what you wish your parents knew when you were 17.
Tell me what turned out okay.
Tell me what surprised you about yourself.
Tell me how you built a life that became bigger than diabetes.
That may be what this season is about.
Learning that my job is slowly shifting from protecting my daughter from every possible hard thing to trusting that she can carry herself through hard things when they come.
Diabetes will still be there in the middle of late-night lows, airport security lines, college classes, first apartments, heartbreaks, celebrations, and ordinary Tuesday mornings.
But so will she.
Capable.
Resilient.
Ready.
And maybe the greatest gift adults with type 1 can give parents like me is not the promise that nothing scary will ever happen, but the reminder that a beautiful, meaningful, joyful life is still waiting on the other side of our fear.
Green and Orange and Somewhere In Between,
Leigh
