Making friends. Playdates. Sleepovers. Birthday parties. Rites of childhood, true? Not so much. Not for everyone. Not for my daughter. One of the things I grieved most in her growing up years was how her brain disorder impaired her socially and communicatively,...
What was I thinking 18 years ago? What did I think this Now I am living would be like? Last weekend, I sat on a park bench with tears suddenly forming rivers down my face as I watched my friend, once again, interrupt our conversation to run after her special needs son...
The veteran parents warned us newbies that we’d soon get a rude shock and it would be followed by a series of shocks throughout the growing up years of our sons and daughters with autism. If we were lucky enough to receive a diagnosis before the age of three,...
Funny how time renders perspective. Even a different way of looking at things once held as definitive truth and “the way.” The “right” way. I now get it. I totally get why that older mom was so miffed and would mouth off against research versus...
Nashville Film Festival Features Documentary About Youth w/ Autism in Transition 4/23 A first kiss, a first dance. These are the rites of passage of American youth that hold the promise of magic, romance, and initiation into adulthood. For youth from all walks...
In our nearly two-decades-old, small, local meet-up group of moms with sons and daughters who have disAbilities, (plus a dad or two, and a few friends who work on behalf of our community,) we call her the queen. Not just any queen, but the Queen Mother. Or,...
From Heartache to Hope: middle tennessee families living with autism, a book by Leisa A. Hammett & photographer Rebekah Pope. Click here for more info plus ordering details.
