Dreams Deferred, Not Defeated

Yesterday, for the first time, Ryan took the ice as a high-school hockey player as the team began on-ice practice for the upcoming season. There were so many points on this autism journey when I thought that would never be possible. Dreams of watching my son play competitive team sports were lost in the early […]

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Trust Me, They Hear Your

Ryan recently celebrated his birthday. Because he’s all about social media these days, he was very excited to receive birthday best wishes on Instagram.  I got in on the act early, quickly searching my phone at breakfast for an old photo of the two of us that I could post with a birthday message for him. […]

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Disconnected Connection

Two blog posts in my inbox caught my attention recently. One, from Austim-Mom.com, pulled something out of my recent post about Ryan tackling an aerial obstacle course. To prep Ryan for the course, I showed him YouTube videos of it to give him some visual perspective about the challenges he was going to face. Autism […]

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Conquering the Cargo Net

It was just a simple cargo net, made of chain, bridging perhaps five feet from the ground to a platform on the playground equipment of one of our local parks. I hated that cargo net. I hated it because Ryan could not, would not (and I know now, was not ready to) climb it. The […]

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Tonight, We Can Be as One

It was Christmas in July this week, as Riley and Ryan finally got to enjoy their big gifts from last Christmas: Taylor Swift tickets for her, and for Ryan, tickets to see U2. The concerts just so happened to fall on back-to-back Saturdays. Riley had her big night with Veronica at MetLife Stadium a week […]

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