Good judgment and wisdom come with age and experience. A parent new to the world of disability or special needs lacks both unless they have been down that road before. We enter that chute unprepared. The capacity to parent a challenged child must be created.

I admit that I did not do this well in the beginning. I fought the reality of our situation. I pitied us, then I felt enraged that this could happen. In the quiet of the night, early in this adventure, I sighed and embraced what I could not fix, could not change. Inevitably we all move forward; that is our instinct. How we proceed makes or breaks our capacity to receive the gift of disability.

And there is a gift.

When a child arrives with challenges, dreams change, and we must as well.  We fall off script and crawl toward our authentic life. Our egos slide back, our hearts expand, and we learn the humility and grace of acceptance. We embrace an individual’s strengths and their challenges not as different, but uniquely typical in another way…their way.