Leadership and growth

Look Ma, no hands!
Photo by Flo Karr
Co-production and advocacy / Disability / Leadership and growth / Special Needs Parenting

Look Ma, no hands!

I have been riding with no hands when it comes to special needs parenting for some time now, ever since our huge move has had my attention elsewhere--getting a job, a place to live, a dog, converting recipes into metrics and Celsius. With so much to take in, I took my hands off the handlebars, trusting that the people around me would keep us safe (a correct hunch), that my mom detectors would sound even if 99% of me was caught up with figuring out the recycling rules of my new homeland, that I would take the handlebars again when it was time.

4 Comments
July 22, 2014
Engagement and Groundhog’s Day
Co-production and advocacy / Disability / Leadership and growth / Special Needs Parenting

Engagement and Groundhog’s Day

It's not Groundhog's Day here in Sweden but that won't stop our family from the annual viewing of the Bill Murray classic. Tonight we'll snuggle on the sofa while Bill awakens to Sonny and Cher for about, according to the DVD comments, 1000 years or so, reliving the same day until he gets it right. When I first saw the movie years ago, it was merely a funny, clever film with wry Murray wit and all that Andy MacDowell hair. Over the years it has become a story of engagement.

1 Comment
February 2, 2014
Wonder
Photo by Emily Morter
Co-production and advocacy / Disability / Improving healthcare / Leadership and growth / My toolkit / Special Needs Parenting

Wonder

I think sometimes we special needs parents are getting the wrong message. We're told that if we want to be effective, we should be the mama bear — fierce and protective. Or the victim, sad and pleading. The course leader's parable reminded me that I have other options, ones that actually might be more effective than anger or sadness.

8 Comments
December 9, 2013
Mind the Gap
Disability / Leadership and growth / Special Needs Parenting

Mind the Gap

On one side is you -- with your skills, your strengths, your resilience, your smarts, your capacity. On the other side is what life throws at you -- work, relationship needs, illness, a bad economy, whatever. The distance (actual or perceived) between what you can do and what life needs you to do is the Gap.

1 Comment
August 9, 2013
Greetings from the other side
Photo by Jean Gerber
Leadership and growth / Special Needs Parenting

Greetings from the other side

We arrived in Sweden to festive pomp and circumstance after disembarking our ship in England and hopping a short flight to Stockholm. Flags, streamers, champagne, hugs, dinner in the garden, even the cherry tree blooming on cue for our arrival...it was a reception in the truest sense of the word.

4 Comments
May 20, 2013
Spending some time at the Threshold
Leadership and growth / Special Needs Parenting

Spending some time at the Threshold

When my husband and I moved our family from Boston to Stockholm last week, we decided to kick the whole she-bang up a notch by getting ourselves to Europe by boat on the Queen Mary 2. A week-long break between the stress of saying good-bye and hello appealed to us both. As the granddaughter of immigrants who had made their way to Ellis Island decades ago by sea, there was the romantic symmetry of returning to Europe on a boat for me as well.

10 Comments
May 11, 2013
Prostration
Photo by Mateus Campos
Co-production and advocacy / Disability / Leadership and growth / My toolkit / Special Needs Parenting

Prostration

Several years ago I heard a radio interview with a devout Jewish woman who had a practice of laying prostrate—face down on the ground, arms outstretched. She said she did it to remind herself that she was not in control of every little thing. She was in God’s hands. In other faiths too, the act of laying oneself down is one of humility or surrender. While I might not share the beliefs from which this tradition springs, I do appreciate the value of acknowledging that I am not always in control.

4 Comments
April 4, 2013
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