My pilgrimage is my writing, I track my tale alongside my twenty-one year-old son Davis in the landscape of our family experience. My identity is not completely shackled to his or to theirs, yet Davis’s capacity to thrive is certainly hitched to me and to the others who care for him at school and at home or in the community. I am humbled by what I can do to make a difference in the quality of my family’s journey and in Davis’s day, empowered when I see results, exhausted by the sheer responsibility of being the mom of the thirty-third child in the world to be diagnosed with his condition called The Phelan-McDermid Syndrome.
Hopefully the cairns and markers found in the writing might help others stumbling along that same less-traveled path of parenting someone with a different-ability. A child not typical. A person unique in their own way who deserves to be honored for their attributes rather than to be diminished for traits and characteristics we are less familiar with.
My tools have been created through humor, through contact with big hearted souls and through creative self-expression. Isn’t that why most of us write? To make sense of our journey, to cull meaning from chaos, to define our purpose? To leave a thread behind that others might follow through the labyrinth of special needs…
If you have a story, I would love to hear it.
The Thirty-Third Child 