She Stood Up for Everyone Else. Now It's My Turn.

When I was six years old, my father died suddenly. The ground shifted beneath our family in a way that never fully settles back into place. But my mother — she steadied herself, and then she steadied us.

She went back to work. She became a third-grade teacher at my elementary school, which meant I had a front-row seat to who she was not just as a mom, but as a person. And what I saw was this: Ms. Dowd did not play around.

If you were in her class, you knew the rules. You also knew, without a doubt, that she was in your corner. I lost count of the evenings she dragged me along to a community center after a full day of teaching so she could sit with a struggling family and help them navigate the system. I remember waiting outside her classroom — again and again — while she met with administrators to fight for a student who needed more support than they were getting. She was just relentless.

My mother loves fiercely. She has never been afraid to speak truth to power.

Last June, my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. We are in the early stages, which means she is still very much her — sharp in so many ways, funny, stubborn in all the right ways. But we know what this disease does. We have watched it take others. And we are not naive about the road ahead.

What I keep coming back to is this: my mother spent decades standing up for people who needed someone in their corner. She did it without fanfare. She did it because it was right. And now, it is my turn to do the same for her.

That is why I will be in Washington, D.C. on May 20th for United for Cures Lobby Day — joining patients, caregivers, and advocates from across the country to call on Congress to protect and restore funding for biomedical research.

The progress on Alzheimer's has been real. There are now treatments that can slow the disease in its early stages — treatments that exist because of sustained federal investment in research. The NIH, the FDA, the entire infrastructure that makes American medical innovation possible — these are not abstractions. For families like mine, they are the difference between hope and helplessness.

But that infrastructure is under threat. Cuts and other disruptions to research funding don't just slow progress — they stop it. They send the scientists elsewhere. They shut down the trials. They take treatments that were almost within reach and push them further away, for longer, for everyone.

My mom fought for kids who had no one else fighting for them. She knew that showing up mattered — that the people in the room got to shape what happened next.

I am showing up.

If you want to join the fight by contacting your members of Congress or simply sharing your own story — visit unitedforcures.org to get involved.

Millions of Americans living with Alzheimer's, and the families who love them, deserve more options, more treatments, and real hope for a cure. My mom is one of them.

My mom taught me that you speak up for the people you love. She taught me that you don't wait for someone else to do it. So that’s why I am United for Cures – for my mom, for my daughters, and for every American who is desperate to have more time with our loved ones.