Diabetes,

I was seven when you first walked into my life, uninvited and unannounced, on a hot summer day in Puerto Rico. I remember the hospital lights, my parents’ hands in mine, and the quiet fear of the unknown: the uncertainty surrounding what you meant and what my life would look like from now on. That same night, you made all of us in that room take on new roles as patient, nurses, and caretakers, all learning together how to welcome you into my life. Soon came the voices telling me what I couldn’t eat, do, or even become.

Somewhere between the finger pricks and the first nights of learning to trust my body again, something shifted. I realized you weren’t the one drawing those limits. People just didn’t understand you yet. And if they didn’t understand you, maybe I could help them.

So I started small. I let my classmates check their glucose next to me, turning something scary into something we could share. I sat with a man seventy years older than me, showed him my Dexcom CGM, and watched him choose to try it. I held the hands of newly diagnosed kids in hospital rooms and passed on an important lesson you taught me along the way: that you are something we live with, not something that decides who we become.

Every one of those moments taught me who I was. You made me braver than I thought I could be. You taught me patience on the hard days and gratitude on the good ones. You showed me that strength isn’t about perfect numbers. It’s about adjusting, breathing, and choosing to keep going, again and again.

And you led me to people I can’t imagine my life without. My family, who carried me before I knew how to carry myself and who never demonstrated a glimpse of fear but rather met every challenge with calm and confidence. My friends, who learned to read my graph and cheered me on through every high, every low, and everything in between. The little girls I mentored, who grew into inspiring leaders. And here in college, a community of people my age who know you as well as I do, reminding me that I was never really walking this road alone.

You’ve followed me through research labs, onto the pages of the children’s book I wrote, and across all 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon. Through it all, you’ve been there, quietly asking me to pay attention, to listen, to care.

So here’s what I want you to know: you’re part of my story, but you’ll never be the whole of it. You opened the first door, yet I’m the one who keeps walking through. And one day, when I’m a doctor back home in Puerto Rico, sitting beside a scared seven-year-old in a hospital bed, I’ll get to tell her what I’ve learned from you: that this is not the end of her story, but the beginning. That’s why I find it a blessing to celebrate you every year. You never defined me; I defined myself as a person who will always surpass all expectations with you by my side.

With love, gratitude, and a whole lot of strength,

Maria