My normal is not your normal.

There is more to me behind the executive profile.

In my recent posts and interviews, there has been a lot of talking about work/life balance and the aspirations of the new members joining the workforce.

Authenticity has also been front and center for me and I have been amplifying this trait around people. So, in support of being true to my values, let me talk about resilience. Absolute resilience.

I am a T1D dad. This is one of my attributes I didn’t want but that I am proud to identify with now. Some of you know that one of my teen children was diagnosed with T1D (or Diabetes Type 1) almost 2 years ago.

For the people who are caregivers for kids with special needs or aging parents, I hear you. I feel you. I hope with you. I anguish with you. As we walk into the world, people who pass us on the sidewalk or interact with us in a meeting have not the slightest idea of how resilient we are.

This news dropped on us like a life shattering event. We had to learn to deal with our fears, with potential irreversible medical threats to our child’s life and even consider potential early death. A lot of dark thoughts for sure and as a mental health expert said, we had to learn to do the mourning of our past life and future aspirations. All the dreams we had for our teen had to be reframed in the context of this disease. The past life we had full of insouciance was also gone. The teen we knew free of mundane worries and perpetual medications was gone. The unplanned dinners with friends or the spontaneous trip to the city were also gone. We can’t even decide to let loose and have few drinks with my wife as one of us is always on duty. This affects our family, our couple, and our careers to an extend.

And while we were supposed to process all of this, we had to learn so much about the disease in an extremely short period of time, such as the care requirements, the information available, the treatments,  the medication, the research, the technology and the list goes on.

Along that journey, we learnt a lot about empathy. We read about having this skill in team management at work. But what became apparent to me was that I had not displayed enough empathy to people I should have. A nephew has the same disease. And yet, I was annoyed when we were visiting about the medical device beeping. I didn’t understand why we needed to have meals at an exact time when in France it’s more free-flowing and for long sittings. Later, it was our turn to educate a lot of people around us including my family when visiting and explaining why food must be served at a certain time and with a good understanding of all ingredients.

We also had to educate so many people who have no clue about T1D and yet, explained to us how to “treat” or “cure” it from having the proper diet, exercising, losing weight, or drinking a magic herbal mix tea. People think diabetes type 1 and 2 are the same. Nope. One is irreversible because your pancreas is dead.

In this challenging time, we found an exceptional community led by organizations like JDRF and composed of all walks of life. I met other parents who are in tech or fintech. In addition to sharing an industry for our line of work, our discussions as T1D parents are also much more open, direct, honest, and understanding without having to even imply it.

The other element is the absolute admiration for our children talent in decision making skills. Like in life/death decision making skills. While as parents, we must increase this skill for ourselves and manage the well-being of our kids, for a teen with a brain not fully matured, it is amazing to watch. We walk by the sign “In this house” illustrating this post every day*. We want our teen to know how exceptional he is and how resilient we are as a family.

For example, a study by Stanford and the National Institutes of Health show that a person with Type 1 Diabetics “requires an astonishing number of health-related decisions estimated at about 180 per day”. That is on top of “normal life” decisions like what to wear, what to say during a meeting, who to talk to, etc.

This is the amount of work, concentration, and confidence someone with T1D must deal with every single minute. There is no break. And all this while being potentially exposed to diabetic distress.

As a T1D dad, I am learning so much from my teen. This in addition to my past professional experiences and at delivering large projects. The top strength of sequencing events and actions to deliver which has been my secret power has sharpened exponentially over the past 2 years. Other skills like permanent multi-tasking, making rapid decisions backed by on-the-fly data analysis of partial parameters, exploring alternative paths to a goal, crafting impact/results strategies, balancing short-term gains with long-term benefits, etc. have become constant staples of my professional arsenal. It also involved facing some fears like my lifelong hyper phobia of needles. Talking about transcending yourself. But the most important one has been to have empathy for everyone, to learn to receive and ask for help and to not judge based on a moment but over a length of time. Because let’s be honest, we all have bad days and most of the time, we don’t ask about personal information about the others in the scope of work because we were told it was not appropriate, we should preserve the privacy of co-workers, etc. We have created a work environment with an underlying fear of doing wrong and creating liabilities for the company and potentially losing one’s job. The new workforce is so over this. They want to feel inspired at and of work. They want to know their colleagues on and off work. They want to be in a friendly and supportive environment. They want the “How are you doing?” to be sincere and meaningful.

And as parents of kids with special needs, we don’t want pity, we just want you to be curious and welcoming being educated. If you are willing to provide some help or relief, even better but we won’t be asking for any. Next time you see the single mom at work struggling with a task or needing to leave work a bit early, remember that she is juggling the complexity of being a parent and a caregiver, learning more medical knowledge you may ever see in a person, navigating the arcane of the insurance system and more importantly, giving everything to her job because this is the closest she has to “being in the norm”. Or next time you see a colleague spacing out in a meeting, it may not be because the meeting is dull or your presentation uninteresting, he may just not have slept for the past 3 nights and while still running on fumes, he decided to go to your meeting because it was also important to him. Or next time you are annoyed by the kid misbehaving on the plane, check the parents’ face. It will tell you that they are trying their best and there are things they cannot control despite having prepared everything for this trip and making sure they had a plan in place just for that situation. However, the plan may go sideways. That’s always a strong possibility. Or next time your friends cancelled at the last minute or “don’t show up” at the next dinner or gathering together, trust me, they would rather be with you than dealing with whatever is happening in that moment.  And yes, all disabilities are not visible. If you don’t pay attention, you may miss my teen’s tubing coming out of his bodies or him checking this funny little device out of his pocket called an insulin pump.

And while I may be a family fractional caregiver, while I may check my phone to monitor my teen’s blood sugar level, while I may have to leave a meeting to go urgently to his school or the ER, while I may have to attend a doctor’s appointment at a bad time of the day, my dedication to my job has been increasing along the one to my teen. Being at work is for me being normal. This is about focusing on some other challenges, putting my mind to work on something I choose. And I have learnt new skills; I have learnt to brutally prioritize, and I have learnt to manage critical situations without losing my cool. My resilience to surrounding and uncontrollable events has skyrocketed.  I have also acquired a completely new bank of knowledge which I am expanding every day. I have become again an avid learner of everything I can get my hands on. I am curious and hopeful. This has also made me a better people manager. I was authentic and I always displayed empathy. But now, I am not shy to share this experience because if it helps someone among my acquaintances, within my team or in the company I work for, find a strong ally, I will step up to bat.

And compared to what my teen is learning and living with, this is so little. I am a T1D dad, and I carry that badge with pride and honor.