Alison Dewey and her husband moved to DC to work, and I was lucky enough that we hired Alison at the League. With a ton of experience in cycling (both riding and working in), and a huge, kind heart, Alison was a dream colleague.

When she arrived, she and her husband had one daughter, and I was pregnant with Oliver. Over the next few years, she and Brian ended up with three girls, each one about a year before our  three kids. When I would find parenting exhausting, or pregnancy impossible, or, frequently, both, Alison would model for me success and survival.

Alison had all three of her babies naturally, which completely awed and amazed me, as she is about as large as a pin head — tiny. She’s also STRONG (ask her about her Ironman Triathalon … ).

Us at their neighborhood park when the babies were tiny (this was when we first took Oliver on a swing, this very day in this very park!).

Anyway, when Clara, her second daughter, was born, Alison noticed right away that something was wrong with her arm. She asked the doctor to look at it, but the doctor said everything was fine. Alison is small, but her will is iron — absolute strength to her core. She and Brian went home, and, in my memory, she looked again at Clara’s arm, and then turned to Brian.

“This is our child. We are responsible for her, we are the only ones who can speak up for her. Her arm is not right, we must go back.” Brian agreed, and they headed back to the hospital that night. Clara’s wee arm had actually been broken during labor, and they put her in a teensy tiny sling and she healed nicely in a couple of weeks (wee bones heal quickly).

Oliver was just a babe at that point, and now he’s a huge six year old. And yet several times a year, whether for physical health or mental health or just to remind us what our jobs are as parents, I quote Alison’s fierce love and dedication to her daughter: We are the only ones who can speak up for them, until they can speak up for themselves. This is our responsibility.

Thanks for the excellent model in how to be a parent, Alison. I admire you hugely.