menu

Special Needs Spotlight || Piper Grace

I’m Meghan and my husband Ross and I live in Massachusetts and are parents to Piper Grace who was born 13 weeks early and is now 6 months old. We also have two dogs who were our babies before Piper came along. I am a Speech-Language Pathologist, though I am currently not working to be...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

Special Needs Parenting: I’m not a better mom than you

I posted the above IG photo a couple weeks ago–and understandably, the photo got a lot of attention. Lamp had painted her toe nails all by herself. You can see the entire caption here. But there was a little more to the story and I wanted to touch on that today.  In preparation for an...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

Eazy, Peazy, Last-Minute Valentine Ideazy

I have a confession, I don’t do that many crafts with my kids. I love the idea of doing crafts with my kids and I would like to do more, but when my oldest daughter gets on Pinterest and is like Mom! Lets make a giant squid hanging lantern and wind chime all in one!...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

Special Needs Spotlight || Ella

Hi there! I am super excited to be part of the spotlight. We’ve followed along from the beginning, and I always learn something new. I am Alissa and  am mother to three fabulous girls (7, 4 and 1) and married to the love of my life. I am a Pediatrician by day (well, 2 days...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

A Return to Hiking

Saturday we had crazy beautiful January weather. It was in the 60’s for crying out loud. Obviously a hike was in order. More than just being excited for a warm day in winter, this hike felt especially exciting as it was the first time I’ve hiked since my herniated disk over a year ago. Hiking...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

Special Needs Spotlight || Rebekah

Hello, lovely people! My name is Rebekah. I am a writer and teacher who lives in a very small, very old house with two chunky orange cats in Kansas City. I’ve been paralyzed for as long as I can remember but did not begin to really unpack what this unique embodiment meant to me until I was in my mid-twenties and began working with disability studies in my PhD program. As I studied for the first time things like the social construction of disability, I began to process a lifetime of memories and feelings connected to my body. While I spend a lot of time writing long-form pieces about my connection to disability, I recently started an Instagram account, @sitting_pretty; I use this account as a medium to 1) reflect on what it means to live as a disabled woman, 2) connect with others who are also processing what it means to live from a particular body, and 3) share more beautiful, nuanced photos of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

***************

Miggy: Hi Rebekah! I’m SO glad to be featuring you today on my special needs spotlight series. I know you from your lovely instagram account @sitting_pretty and I can’t remember if you found me or if I found you but I’m so glad we found each other! In addition to being beautiful, smart, poised (and a little sassy) you are also a paraplegic and a wheelchair user. A lot of your IG posts about accessibility have really struck a chord with me. But lets start at the beginning…you were born a typical and healthy child, but were diagnosed with cancer when you were 14 months old. The tumor wrapped around your spinal cord and by age three you were paralyzed. You also spent a significant amount of time in your early years in and out of the hospital treating your cancer. What do you remember about those early years? Do you remember what it was like to walk? Overall how would you categorize your childhood (or do you)? Looking back now, do you have a different view of how those early years have shaped you?

Rebekah: I actually don’t remember very much from those early years going through the chemo, radiation, and operations. In some ways, those years feel more like my parents’ story than mine. They have very sharp memories of what it was like to watch their youngest baby fight deadly cancer for years, and I have to struggle to imagine how I might have experienced the stories I’ve only heard about myself. I’ve watched the fuzzy, 1980s home-movies taken of me in the hospital with my bald head and baggy, yellow hospital gowns so many times, I wonder what I remember and what my imagination has fabricated into a makeshift memory. I do have a few very vivid clips and snippets from that time that I hold onto tightly: my dad singing songs to me while he pushes me across the street toward the hospital in my ratty blue stroller; using a permanent blue marker to draw scars to match mine on my baby doll while my mom napped; a doctor sticking my paralyzed legs with pins, shouting “Do you feel this?” I don’t remember the months upon months of nausea and vomiting from the chemo, I don’t really recall the needles or the surgeries, I don’t have a single memory of walking, and I can’t imagine what having full sensation in all of my body might feel like. In some ways this feels like a giant gift, and in other ways, it makes me feel largely disconnected from myself. Those years were incomprehensibly formative for who I am now, and I can’t recall them. (But maybe that’s the same for all of us in one way or another.)
  [readmore title= “Click through to read the rest of one of my all-time favorite spotlights!”]

Great ALT-spectations

–the real star of the show, my necklace Sorry for all the crickets around here, but I just got back from a whirlwind, last minute trip to Utah to attend Alt Summit last week and I’m still riding the high. Perhaps if you’ve been around the blogging circles for years you’ve heart of Alt Summit...

Add a comment...

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *

Hey, I'm Amy!

I'm an author, artist, and disability advocate. I live with my handsome husband and three beautiful daughters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

categories

purchase when charley met emma

Let's be friends!