An Open Letter to “Jamie” Parnell Spears from a Guardian Mom.
photo from bbc.com
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Lowered Expectations
I don’t know who Paul Thompson is but he has written what sounds like an awesome book, Aim Low: A Story About Lowered Expectations. I may read it, or listen to it or whatever I have to do to consume this material. I’m still slogging through the end of Vulgar Favors—the rest of the book […]
Read more "Lowered Expectations"That Autism Memory Loop
Lots of us live in the past. I spend too much time there, in the what if’s and should have’s that only make me feel bad. Regret is that pet you buy but you can’t take care of and never leaves your memory. I live with the revolving door of my autistic daughter’s memory. She […]
Read more "That Autism Memory Loop"A Year Without Autism
It’s been one year since I moved my then 22 year old autistic daughter into her supported living apartment. As part of the transition, the apartment was set up weeks before she moved. She visited a few times before the move so she had a visual picture of what she new home would be like. […]
Read more "A Year Without Autism"The Lovely Eggs
[a creative nonfiction but that was just rejected for publication] I spent the better part of the last 20 years letting three children suck the life out of me. They consistently depended on my help at all kinds of ungodly hours. Preschool aged mornings were the worst. I had twin girls, one of whom had […]
Read more "The Lovely Eggs "School: The Disability Trinity Part II
There are days when I wake up and see the goodness in almost everyone. I feel well rested, refreshed and ready to face the day in peace with a renewed sense of purpose. I attribute this feeling 100% to the fact that I will never have to attend another fucked up IEP meeting ever again. […]
Read more "School: The Disability Trinity Part II"Entitlement Benefits: Part 1 of the Disability Holy Trinity
Parents of disabled kids are always on the internet yammering away about something tragic or poignant. Some are more elegant than others (see the exceedingly beautiful essayhttp://velamag.com/superbabies-dont-cry/), but all parents of “specials” experience our children in a pointedly unique way. To put some corporate jargon spin on it, we are afforded more opportunities to “syngerize” […]
Read more "Entitlement Benefits: Part 1 of the Disability Holy Trinity"I Want My 90’s Back
In 1987 I was sitting in a sociology survey class at Ohio State and read a book that was designed for people born, as I was, in 1968. The instructor was a Baby Boomer and also the author of the book. He was professorially gleeful in reminding us how much that my generation X owed […]
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