Skip to main content

Finding Comfort

Nobody makes it through their lives without losing at least one person they were close to.  Throughout my own lifetime I have lost many.  2011 was an especially hard year starting in January with the passing of my mother-in-law and then in March with the passing of my first cousin.  It seemed like just about every month, either I knew someone personally that had passed or knew of someone that had passed.  Back in July of 2011, when I started this blog, I wanted a way to get some of my feelings out about what I was going through.  I would have been happy if one person read my blog and got some kind of comfort from the words that I had wrote.  When I was a teen, I did have one of those diaries with the little lock on it.  For a little while I wrote in it, but it felt more like a chore, something I had to do.  My blog on the other hand, is something I look forward to doing.  I have found an enormous amount of comfort in writing down what I have on my mind.  My father-in-law was one of the kindest, sweetest men that ever walked this earth.  When he would visit us or we would visit him, he and I would sit around the kitchen table and chat.  If I got him going on a topic, I would tease him that he was on his "soapbox."  Next month will be seven years that he has been gone. He would have gotten a kick out of me doing my blog, because I can kind of get up on my "soapbox" and talk about the things that are important to me.  In a few days,  it will be my six-month anniversary of my association with the parenting website, MomsEveryday.com.  I love to read what other moms (and dads) have written about their experiences with their children.  My fellow bloggers and I all share the same thing, we write from the heart and write from our experiences.  How do you find comfort when you're going through a tough time? Remember if you're feeling a certain way there is at least one other person out there that feels the same way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Those "Steps" to Independence Can Be Hard

We are heading towards 600 orders for Dominic's business. Since our long-term goal for Baked Goods By Dominic is having a "brick-and-mortar" and hire those with disabilities, it is essential and imperative that I continue to teach him all parts of the business. Since I prompted Dominic for so many years for speech, he has become "prompt dependent." What that essentially means is that he will look at me for a prompt, like, "what do you do next?" I do that one a lot. Dominic has been going to a private speech therapist for over ten years and she reminds me often that Dominic usually will know the answer, if I am patient and wait for him. That has been a very hard habit to break! Dominic has an incredible memory, so I put it to the test this morning. I didn't write out the steps, I wanted to see how much he could do completely on his own. We have a customer picking up his order today, but the only thing that had been done is putting the cookies into t

Why We Pursued Guardianship of our Son with Autism

Last Thursday morning, my husband, Dominic and I went to our county's Probate Court and had Dominic's Guardianship Hearing. My husband and I are Co-Guardians, and we were granted "Partial Guardianship," which means Dominic can make some of his own decisions (future educational and vocational placement options, what to wear and how he wants to spend his free time), but my husband and I will make his medical, health care, legal, contractual and major financial decisions. The subject of Guardianship in the disability "world" has been and continues to be a controversial and divisive topic.  I was a panelist for an Autism Conference this past summer and presented on what it's like to have a child with Autism. Towards the end of my presentation, I mentioned that Dominic had just turned 18 and that we were going through the Guardianship process. When the attendees could ask questions, the first person that went up to the microphone started telling me that I was

Presume Competence

Since we have traveled outside of the United States since Dominic was very small, we have had to get him a Children's Passport every five years. Since his current one expires in February of 2024 and he is now 19, we had to apply for an Adult Passport. I don't know why my husband and I picked Dominic's first day of school and Michigan State University moving in their students, but the appointment was yesterady at 3 p.m. We had gathered all of the documents needed and then went into a special room in the East Lansing Post Office just for Passports. The three of us sat down and the clerk asked Dominic his age. He said, "19." Since we were also getting his picture taken for the Passport, he went into a separate room, where she took a picture of him and then let him look at it to make sure he liked it (it will be his picture for the next 10 years)!  He said he did, so he sat back down with us. The clerk filled out a bit more of the paperwork and then she let Dominic s