People with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience poorer health outcomes than the general population. As I wrote this month on SpecialSib, part of the reason is that the people providing their care often haven't been trained to do it well. That isn't only a frontline problem. It is a systems problem, and that is the… Continue reading Critical Issues in Health for People with IDD: What’s on My Desk This Month
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com From the outside, it probably looked like kindness. A man who doesn't speak is lying in a hospital bed. A nurse turns on the TV, finds a children's cartoon, and leaves it playing. Something gentle and bright to pass the time. My brother was fifty years old. When I… Continue reading He Was Fifty. She Put On Cartoons.
Photo by KoolShooters on Pexels.com I have a confession. Somewhere around page 100 of the sib book I've been writing, I stopped. (Not the book proposal that was just accepted.) This blog, in a book. I hired an editor. She did a once-over, and I did not finish the corrections. Not because I ran out… Continue reading Navigating Project Stalls: Insights for Sibs
Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com I've been in and out of therapy as an adult. Not because something catastrophic happened to me. Not because I had a single defining trauma. But because growing up as a sib left marks I didn't fully understand until I was well into adulthood — and some of them I'm… Continue reading Was It Stress — Or Was It Something More?
My dad's sister Penny had limited speech. Most people couldn't understand much of what she said. But there was one phrase she had down cold — one phrase that was perfectly clear every single time. "I know you." It didn't matter if she'd just met you or known you for decades. Penny greeted everyone the… Continue reading When Penny Said “I Know You”
