Tag: autism
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Keep the memories of LIGHT Year 3 and Rest in Peace, Dr. Ivis M. Richardson!
Our LIGHT festival just ended. I was supposed to close and inform people about the plans for next year. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Our last speaker, Christell Roach lost her grandmother, Dr Ivis M. Richardson yesterday. She could have cancelled, she could have called and told us about her death. We would have understood. My…
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Keep looking on the bright side or happy 10th birthday Chiwetel!
Exactly 10 years ago, at around 5:30am, we gave birth to a boy whom we would later name our gift from God. Chiwetel was as beautiful as any sunny day. Lotanna and mama visited us later that morning. I still vividly recall Lotanna in her pink dress and pink tights, with spiky threaded hair, the…
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Keep these ideas as you wait for early intervention!
I have been thinking about what parents can do while they wait. A family member runs an Applied Behavioral therapy group and she is having a hard time finding therapists for her many kiddos. I said it must be tough and is the waiting list much better now. My reasons and full disclosure, one of…
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Keep all your tears!
I have this memory, etched forever in my minds extremity, of tears, of chaos, and vows that I made, as winds rustled by, that you my son, the one God gave to us, the one that taught life’s extremities, those that flair up on their own, those that rhyme on their own, those that bang,…
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Keep being limitless!
I dreamed things would be different. Children would laugh and I would sit back and sigh. There is no place like home. Not in form, for some. So thank God for all the roosters, turkey, cows goats and monkeys we saw along the way. Also thank you to all the trees that swayed around, ushering…
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Keep what God brings!
I knew there would be stares. I expected it. I knew many would never get his ways or ask questions about his tears. I didn’t realize they would stare, or laugh or drive us away. I also didn’t realize we would be shunned or pitied too as if to live with him is a deadly…
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Keep karma!
‘I promise you l, I’ll be right back like karma.’ I love these lines. They are from an artist my son listens to on repeat. His name his Phyno and my second son is his biggest fan. Phyno sings and raps in Igbo and has been a tremendous source of comfort for my son when…
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Keep writing letters!
My son repeats himself always. He is on the spectrum so we expect this. But these days I have been working to channel all his repetition into something useful. Enter writing letters. Today he woke up saying the same things he wanted yesterday, his toys for Christmas. I told him to take a piece of…
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Keep the little things in mind!
My son attends a school that was severely damaged by the floods that came through Saint Louis in July. Their entire basement was gutted and all the rooms they use for their sensory activities were destroyed. We started school a week later than most and had to readjust everything with classrooms now in a different…
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Keep the sound of music!
Lives healed by the sound of music. And lives restored in the middle of meltdowns, are dancing to their own tunes now. Becoming too, in tune with all the noise, and sorrow, pulling us down, sign of the times and full moon, all the good news, for lives lived beyond these times. I am on…
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Keep the bright side always!
I think about the day he was kicked out of school often. They rise up during moments like today, rise up like the moon, to remind me of how far we have come. The journey has indeed been long. Here was a boy, kicked out of his first school experience only after two days. Here…
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Keep knowing that the source of health is never outside!
I am re-reading Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salteaters, and I am struck by this line in the book ‘the source of health is never outside.’ The book itself is always worth a read but the idea of all you need for health nestled within you has always made me feel whole. Two days ago, my…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 