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...
It is possible to be physically present in nature but not be present in the one “Now” moment that nature encourages. I recall the time I walked the length of Radnor Lake, and only at the end did I realize I’d not been present in the beauty...
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,...
Mother’s day. This year’s Hallmark celebration came and went. And, my own Mother’s been gone for seven years now. Oddly, I feel closer to her now than I may have ever felt when she was living. That’s due mostly to the shifts within me. I spoke...
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...
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.