Parenting
March 3, 2017
On February 15, 2017 writer and radio personality Stuart McLean died from cancer.I was saddened by the news of his death, deeply saddened.For him and his family and friends. But also in a selfish way I felt sad there would be no new volumes of work. No more new books and CD’s for Christmas. I wanted to do this post right away but honestly it was hard for me to admit he had died, kind of like when Robin Williams died. Grief and pure disbelief. I first heard of Stuart probably around the year 2001. Adam and I had been trying to have a baby with no luck. I was heartbroken and trying to see the good in things but […]
June 1, 2017
In 2010, our darkest of times as a family, I began to use an analogy of a swimming pool when trying to describe the difficult parts of our family’s journey and I wanted to share it here. I make specific references to adoption because that is the journey I have made but I hope the analogy itself might strike a chord with other parents of kids with complex needs as well. Back when my husband and I decided to pursue adoption, we never expected it to be easy. Not at all. But there was no real way for us to know how very hard it would be until we had experienced it for ourselves. Throughout the adoption process we were […]
July 26, 2017
On Sundays Corbin plays soccer in a league for kids with Autism (it goes against my belief of inclusion but sometimes he needs to decide for himself). This past Sunday we went to the states to do some shopping and we were happy with our purchases but pretty tired. We contemplated letting Corbin skip the game but he takes his commitment seriously and we don’t want to discourage that in any way. The plan was that I would take him to soccer and stop at Little Caesar’s on the way home. We were at soccer, it’s an indoor field, and the way the benches are you can’t see the other end of the field unless you lean way out. So it’s […]
September 3, 2017
Imagine you have a job that requires you to do increasingly harder tasks each day that you go there. Let’s say you are working a desk job but every day you are expected to do 50 sit ups. You haven’t done a sit up in years and you have a bad back from a previous injury. But everyone is required to do it so you give it a try and you maybe get in 2 or 3 before you give up. Your boss critiques your performance and gives you a Level 1 – the worst level there is. He also decides that because you can’t do sit ups you probably can’t do a lot of other activities the job entails. […]
May 13, 2018
Growing up I knew without a doubt that my mother loved me. I also knew that my mother was easily agitated, had high anxiety and suffered from debilitating migraines that could last days, even weeks. I learned early on how to take care of her, to try to keep stress to a minimum. I can’t say my brother and I always succeeded, we were children after all, but I think I did a fair amount of care giving at a very young age. It was difficult for my mother to go into social situations. She would worry obsessively in the days leading up to any event, even those she genuinely was excited to attend (such as a family gathering). Once […]