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Choosing A Way Forward
I don’t know why I felt so much older than her. Only a few months earlier I had been right where she was- a high school kid with my whole future ahead of me. Only my daily routine had changed. What...
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Disrupting the Balance
Someone ahead of me in the drive-thru decided to pay for my coffee. I have had this happen more than anyone else I know. People really enjoy paying it forward to me, specifically. What exactly is the...
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Facing Forever Every Day
When I look back at my childhood, I hardly ever think about the fourth grade. My teacher wasn’t particularly memorable. I had no strong feelings about her either way. Her classroom had the only piano...
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Navigating Our New Social Role
Last year I wrote a post about “safe conversations” with casual acquaintances and strangers. I was finding that almost any general small talk led to questions about my daughter. “Oh, she must be...
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Heaven and Hell
I started thinking more seriously about heaven and hell around the age of seven. I didn’t grow up in a religious household, but I did own a bible. I even went to church without my family, securing...
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Lost In Translation
When I was in the third grade my family moved a few streets over. My parents bought a house up on a hill, surrounded by woods and next door to a pond. Down the road was a cross-country skiing...
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The Things We Leave Behind
I lost a lot of my toys in the summer of 1984. That was the year my parents bought a house in preparation for the arrival of my little sister. I was sick during the move and spent most of that time on...
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Hovering
I am the mom who hovers. I am definitely not the hovering type. Here I am at the park, hoping there will be a moment when I can sit on a bench while she goes through her rituals; carefully watching...
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Oregon Or the Grave! (And Other Lessons from the Oregon Trail)
If you read my posts even occasionally, you know that I am a genealogy nerd. So it should be no surprise to anyone that I am a fan of the show “Who Do You Think You Are?” on TLC. It’s one of three...
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Reading While Invisible
People are always telling me how wonderful it is that Teghan loves books. It’s a thing we say to parents, the same way we congratulate each other on our children’s height or ability to hold a pencil...
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Redefining Our Traditions
I am in love with the idea of creating traditions for my child. Kids typically grow up to live independent lives, and parents are forced to watch as the daily world they worked so hard to build slips...
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Ghosts of New Year’s Eve Past
It’s New Year’s Eve again. From year to year it may find us anywhere, and with anyone. We celebrate with an “end of an era” attitude, as we sum up our year and move forward with a clean slate. We like...
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Living the Easier Life
Raising a special needs child is full of ups and downs. When we first received the diagnosis, I could never have anticipated how different things would be from year to year. How one challenge can mean...
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It Could Be Worse, It Could Be Better
It’s been four years since our daughter was officially diagnosed and we took on the challenge of autism parenting. It could be worse, it could be better. That’s true for everyone. You know the rule,...
View ArticleThe Battle of Retard
I cannot tell you how many times I have been called retarded. Maybe a billion times. In elementary school I suppose my friends and I must have called each other retards an average of sixty times a day....
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The Slide
This past weekend we traveled to Michigan for my sister’s wedding. Teghan does exceptionally well on long car rides, but the three nights in a hotel had us a little worried. Outside of a few screams...
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Teaching Beauty
I don’t have perfect skin. I am pale and blotchy. You can clearly see the veins on my eyelids and I have had dark circles every day of my life. I don’t wear makeup to be the prettiest woman in the...
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Pancake! Pancake! Pancake!
Teghan goes through cycles of preferred word groupings. She is obsessed with words, even if she isn’t very good at stringing them together. She loves word apps and she seems to take pride in labeling...
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Making Life Easier
It’s hard to believe it was almost two years ago that I wrote about visiting the Motown Museum in Detroit. Time does fly. Since then I have gushed about how the staff responded to our daughter’s...
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For the Love of Rivalry
Rivalries. In the world of sports everybody’s got one. I would guess I was in elementary school when I first learned I had to make a decision between Michigan and Michigan State (Michigan of course),...
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