More Than an Ally: What My Daughter Taught Me About Being an Upstander

In three months, our family will quietly mark an anniversary that changed everything. Three years ago, a few weeks before her fifth birthday, my daughter Isabelle was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

It wasn’t our first rodeo. Isabelle had already been diagnosed with Celiac disease shortly after her third birthday. We had already learned a new vocabulary, overhauled our kitchen, and navigated a different kind of “normal.” But T1D brought a different magnitude of adjustment — one that is ongoing, visible, and woven into every single day.

Living in a Body That Requires More

Isabelle is almost eight now. She is funny and fierce and athletic. She is also a kid who wears two medical devices on her body at all times — a continuous glucose sensor and an insulin pump — plus a phone or smartwatch to monitor everything in between. She carries more technology on her small frame than most adults do.

At school, Isabelle navigates a world designed for kids who don’t need to think about what they eat. She has a different lunch menu. She visits the nurse more than her classmates. She answers questions from other kids — sometimes kind, sometimes just curious, occasionally oblivious — about the devices on her arms or legs. She is learning, at seven years old, to explain herself without embarrassment, to advocate for her needs without apology, and to understand that being different is not the same as being less.

What she doesn’t fully see yet is the infrastructure behind her. The 504 plan at school that legally protects her access. The middle-of-the-night glucose alerts. The pre-planning before every birthday party, every sleepover, every field trip. The conversations with teachers, nurses, coaches, and parents of friends before she ever walks through a door. The constant recalibration of: what does she need to know, what do we carry for her, and how do we make sure she never feels like a burden?

As her parents, our job is not just to protect her. It’s to build the world around her so she can move through it freely — and to teach her which walls she can climb, which ones she needs to challenge, and which ones simply don’t belong there.

We are not just her allies. We are her champions.

What Championship Actually Looks Like

When Isabelle was diagnosed, our world contracted fast. Hospital. Diagnosis. Crash course in carb ratios and correction factors, and what to do at 2 am when an alarm goes off. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not just from fear, but from the sheer cognitive load of a medical crisis layered on top of regular life.

During that time, I was leading Finance Team 4 at Insource Services.

The Executive Team made sure I knew, without any ambiguity, that family came first. GrubHub deliveries showed up at our door — no ask, no fanfare, just one less thing to think about when thinking was already in short supply. That kind of top-down signal matters more than people realize — it doesn’t just relieve pressure on one person, it gives an entire team permission to show up the same way.

And show up they did. Without being asked, my team stepped in and covered my work seamlessly. Messages came — not performative check-ins, but real ones. We’ve got this. Take the time. Don’t think about it. And then something arrived that stopped me completely: a care package. Not just for Isabelle. For our whole family.

Inside: an assortment of low-carb treats for Isabelle, tea for us, and a mini computer toy — so she could be just like mom. That last item undid me. They hadn’t just googled “what do you send a sick kid.” They had paid attention. They knew who Isabelle was beyond the diagnosis. They saw a curious little girl who looks up to her mother, and they honored that.

They saw all of us. Not just the sick child. Not just the distracted colleague. The whole family navigating something hard together.

That is the difference between sympathy and championship. Sympathy says I’m sorry this is happening to you. Championship says I see everything this is costing you, and I’m going to do something about it.

From Champions to Upstanders: The Workplace Connection

Disability Awareness Month asks us to do more than acknowledge that disability exists. It asks us to examine our role in the experience of those around us who are navigating something we can’t see — or something we can see, and choose to look past.

Most of us are comfortable being allies. We believe in inclusion. We would never intentionally exclude someone. We mean well.

But allyship is passive. Upstanders act.

• Noticing without being asked. Not waiting for a colleague to raise their hand and announce they’re struggling before you offer to help.
• Covering without keeping score. Stepping in during someone’s hard season — a diagnosis, a caregiving crisis, a mental health dip — because you trust the team will do the same for you.
• Seeing the whole person. Acknowledging that the colleague who seems distracted may be managing something invisible and complex, and responding with curiosity instead of judgment.
• Making space without making it awkward. Including someone in a conversation, a project, a celebration — without turning their difference into the headline.
• Pushing and protecting at the same time. The hardest and most important one. Just as I tell Isabelle: here are your responsibilities, here is what to be aware of, and here is what you must never let limit you — a true upstander holds both the challenge and the support simultaneously. They don’t lower the bar. They help you clear it.

The Question I’m Sitting With

When Isabelle is older, she will understand more of what these years have required. She will know about the 504. She will know about the 2 am alerts. She will know about the care package that arrived for all of us.

I hope what she takes from it is not that she was fragile and needed protecting. I hope she takes from it that she was surrounded by people who chose to show up — not because they had to, but because that’s who they decided to be.

This July, I’m asking myself — and I’m asking you — which kind of person are you deciding to be?

Not just for colleagues with visible disabilities. For the ones carrying something you can’t see. For the ones who haven’t said anything yet. For the ones who are quietly building an infrastructure of their own, just trying to make it through the day.

Be the team that sends the care package.

Be the upstander.