Forgetting Milestones and Learning to Measure Progress… a New Way of Thinking! #StandUpforInclusion-SantoDomingo

By Mary Ellen Bogucki PART ONE A few months ago, I wrote about the “Inclusion Revolution” and the Special Olympics 50th Anniversary celebration. While we were at the 50th celebration, my daughter Bree had the great honor of meeting Cándida Montilla de Medina, the First Lady of the Dominican Republic. We also had the privilege of hearing the First Lady, who is a psychologist, speak and describe all of the positive work she is doing […]

The Endless Fight for Help: Yesterday and Today

by Maxine Rosaler When I was looking for schools for my son twenty years ago, private special education schools were the only schools equipped to give autistic children anywhere near the kind of help they needed. The competition for these schools was very stiff: it was not usual to find out that there were fifty applicants for every spot. And if a parent was lucky enough to have her child accepted at one of these […]

On Time for Myself

by Carey Handley Several years ago, when I was in counseling for depression, my therapist asked when the last time was I went away with the girls for the weekend. My very clever response was to look at her blankly and say, “Uh…never. It’s never crossed my mind.” She returned the blank look and, speaking with disbelief, told me it was about time I did exactly that. Later that night, as I was contemplating why […]

The Surprise of Cervical Spinal Stenosis

by Lisa Blumberg On Friday March 23, 2018, when Janice, the pet therapy lady, came with a languid dog whose name evades me, I could still take some steps if I leaned my full weight on my walker. My internist had just told me that my MRI indicated that the progressive weakness in my extremities was being caused by upper spinal cord compression from cervical stenosis. This totally surprised me. I was having pain now […]

What Do You See?

 by Carey Handley What do you see when you look at my daughter? I’ve sometimes wondered how other people see her. I wanted a daughter perhaps more than anything else in the world. So much so that I wished for her when I was at the Wishing Door in a mosque in Cairo, Egypt followed a few days later by a wish tucked into a crevice in the Western Wall in Israel. My wish was […]