Hi Nation! In case you missed it, this post has unexpectedly become my best-performing one. My Son’s Disability Brought Out the Worst in Me You never know what will hit a nerve. (Also it got boosted by Medium.) This one lived in my mind for a long time before I…

Though not the social media marketing type necessarily — Influence is the ability to affect someone else’s thinking. This line from the book Difficult Conversations got me to admit the following to myself: One of the main reasons I write is that I want to be an influencer! It’s also why I post and engage in social media and…

No exceptions — I was at a party recently sitting across from my sister Sandra, aka Dr. Mini, talking about this and that when, out of the blue, she said “Swallow.” From her expression, I knew she’d turned from sister to doctor. “You have a small bulge on your neck. You oughta have…

The very best in me — It’s no secret that parenting is damn hard. It brings out the worst in you and unearths some of the best a person can give. This piece is about the latter. The Patience of a Saint “Dani has the patience of a Saint,” Candy, a teaching assistant I’ve worked with for years, has said about…

Gluten-free crepes! — Monday, June 19, and Tuesday, June 20- NYC and London Thank You for Your Patience Nothing ever goes according to plan. The first step in our Europe trip seriously deviated from the plan. Five minutes into our drive to JFK and I already felt a twinge of anxiety. The flight’s departure time was 7:30 PM and…

The worst was always there — People think I’m a good person but I’m not. There’s good and also a lot of bad in me. This story is about my worst self. Selfish When my son Diego was school age, he always qualified for what’s known as extended school year (ESY) -essentially, summer services for students with…

My seven reasons why — I seriously considered going gray three years ago during the lockdown. After much soul-searching and extensive consultation with family and friends, I realized it wasn’t time. It felt like an identity change I wasn’t ready for. Well folks, this time around, I’m ready…. to at least try it out. April…

A mother’s take on the difference vs. disability discussion — The meaning of an autism label has changed so radically that I sometimes feel it hardly relates to my 29-year-old son anymore. When autism is described as difference and only difference, the label which took me so long to embrace no longer applies to him. My Three Stages of the Autism Label Acceptance I kept the label to…

About womanhood, money, aging, morality, immigrants, and parents — “On the whole, our indiscriminate enjoyment of being right is matched by an almost equally indiscriminate feeling that we are right.” Kathryn Schulz, in Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error Growing up, I believed the prettiest girls had blue eyes and blond hair. Therefore, my blond-haired, blue-eyed sister…