The things that make me different make me, me” written by flaunters about themselves or family members
“Just let me know if you need extra blankets for the daddy bed.” I smiled and responded, “thanks so much,” to the well-intentioned nurse as she left me alone with my first baby, Coleman, who had come into the world just a few hours earlier. My heart was full of so many different emotions and […]
Remember how exciting birthdays used to be? Yeah, me neither. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still love my birthday and manage to celebrate for a whole month. But at this point, it’s more about celebrating me and spending time with friends than it is about being another year older, and having a higher […]
Mom Genes. No, not the high-waisted, dorky, denim kind. The kind that live on chromosomes and with a roll of the dice determine the characteristics we inherit from those who came before us. As a child I wondered, will I develop my father’s superior athletic ability or my mother’s musical flair? As a young girl […]
“Oh my gosh, she should not be wearing that shirt.” With disdain, remarks like this are whispered everyday on my college campus, numerous times a day, by many different people—particularly girls. To some credit, “Wow, that dress makes her look so skinny!” is probably spoken a similar number of times around campus. But these comments are not […]
“…I was born missing my left forearm and hand. When I was a teenager I decided that I was going to teach myself to play the guitar. Learning to play the guitar was a serious challenge for me and required a lot of time and patience. It ended up taking me eight years to come […]
In my experience, there’s something magical about changing diapers with only one hand. My wife thinks it’s less magical, and more…totally unfair. I can’t explain the science behind it, but every one of my three children were perfect angels when I changed their diapers. They would smile and coo and lay there while I swiftly, […]
If you want to get a taste of what it’s like to have a visible difference, try walking around with a big bandage on your nose for a few weeks. I recently had some minor surgery on my nose and my bandage has been yielding some interesting reactions from people. Let’s start with people who […]
Aaah the Jersey Shore! Fist pumping and Snookie Smoosh aside, the month of July has always been a great time when you live in New Jersey. I grew up a Jersey Girl and have fond childhood memories of visits to the shore as a child. Reading Meg’s blogs about exposing her feet at the beach […]
I am the Stacey that Meg refers to in her blog “Pay it Forward.” Meg and I are good friends. She usually takes the bus to work in NYC and I take the train. But sometimes Meg takes the train and I am always excited when Meg joins me so we have a chance to […]
Our situation starts as most family holidays do… For some months we had meticulously planned how we would spend our time at Disneyland Paris for what would be this years ‘big holiday’. We’d been once before, the difference this time being that we were now a family of four, and that Isabella, our eldest child, […]
I have a great husband, a spunky toddler son and a job I love. All the things you hope for as a little girl. They were things I was not sure I would get since I am different. I was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congentia and it mainly affected my hands and legs – I […]
Friends. They say you can’t have too many friends. Of all the things “they” say, this may be the statement I believe in the most. Being the father of a special needs son, I’ve learned a lot about friendship. My son is affected by a rare syndrome known as Ectodermal Dysplasias. Each year my wife […]
Of all the posts I’ve read on Meg’s blog, “Pay It Forward” gave me the greatest pause. I’ve known Meg since our undergrad days at UW Madison – halcyon days when we believed the future and our dreams to be limitless. In “Pay It Forward,” Meg’s encounter with the conductor who offered her a “disabled” […]
