About 100 women gathered for a full two days of bonding, learning, laughing and hanging out with fellow women with diabetes at Diabetes Sisters’ annual conference, “Weekend for Women.”

This was also the second year partners were invited, so I invited mine. He came and got to meet about 40 others who were learning more about their wife and girlfriend’s diabetes, to air their feelings and learn more about how to be supportive.

I led a workshop, “Ignite Your Diabetes Power” Saturday morning. The secret? Identifying your strengths, building emotional resilience, knowing how diabetes works and knowing the actions to take to work it for you. It was a great workshop with about 60 of our d-sisters in attendance. 

Saturday night I had a table full of sisters join me for dinner, including our guest host speaker, the irrepressible Mother Love. In fact, every time she passed me anywhere at the conference, her arms opened wide to embrace me and her warmth enveloped me. Her story of a family besieged with type 2 diabetes that has taken almost all her family members is tragic, while she has committed herself to helping others and getting the word out. 

Sunday some of us took a field trip to an organic farm while others took a tour of Novo Nordisk’s Clayton, NC facility where we saw how insulin gets packaged, stored, sent down the assembly line and on and on. It really makes you realize how carefully our medicine must be treated.

For me, it was in Brandy Barnes’, Diabetes Sisters’ founder, closing message that made me realize the absolute value of this weekend. There shouldn’t be any woman with diabetes out there alone. Brandy encouraged us to tell any woman we know with diabetes about the conference, bring her into the fold so she can gain strength and knowledge and community. Amen.

Diabetes Sisters will be offering their West Coast “Weekend for Women” conference October 4-6 in San Francisco. If you’ve never been, give yourself the weekend as a gift for all you do living with this disease.