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I remember the day so vividly, not the date or the year, just the day. I hadn’t been practicing yoga that long and wasn’t really into all the quotes and mediation stuff, I was simply trying to take back a bit of myself after the first few years of motherhood. The teacher started the class
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We’ve just returned home from Pop Warner Cheer Nationals, no trophy in hand, but an experience of a lifetime for the 18 girls and their families. This is only the second trip we’ve taken via air travel, as I was a nervous wreck, and keto consumed our lives for the better part of four years.
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For the past several years, I have coached youth recreational cheerleading. What started as a way to ensure my child with epilepsy (and cerebral palsy) could participate has morphed into my renewed love for cheerleading and sharing it with my daughter, who I feared would never be able to dance or cheer. Cheerleading is hard
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“At this point, we are worried about disordered eating in the future.” The words reverberated through my mind as tears welled in my eyes and my stomach sank. “It’s time to stop the ketogenic diet; she likely got what she needed from it in the first two years.“ Almost four solid years, three of which
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Songs, smells, and foods take us back to particular days and times. It’s Unforgettable (Nat King Cole) or almost every song on the ’90s on 9 channel, ocean air, and black licorice for me. They invoke nostalgia, bringing a warm and fuzzy feeling, almost as if you are being embraced by a memory. Yet, in
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Grief, we typically equate it to the loss of a person. Grief that is the loss of what was or should be is like a wave you see coming but can’t avoid. It knocks you down with one fell swoop, dragging you out to sea, you are left fighting your way back to shore, yet
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Seasons change. Every four months we anticipate the renewal of spring, the warmth of summer, the crispness of fall and the cold, cozy days of winter. The shifts come and we embrace them. Yet, do we embrace the seasons of our life changing?
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I recently went down a rabbit hole of looking through old photos for a project I’m working on. Pictures from my childhood, awkward teenage years and early twenties unearthed from dusty boxes. I was reminded of the person I was before. Before marriage, before parenthood, before epilepsy. There was the girl who fought through an
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ago as the 10 Lessons I’ve learned in 10 years of parenting a child with disabilities, but I kept getting stumped or going off on a tangent. Parenting looks nothing like I had envisioned it, instead of ballet recitals, soccer practice and sleepovers it’s therapy appointments, bloodwork and way too many seizures. But it’s taught…
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I want carefree normalcy, yet Epilepsy just will not allow it. I want a vacation from Epilepsy…and it wouldn’t hurt if it was on a tropical island Pina Colada in my hand, Reagan running free through the waves not a care in the world.
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In general people are uninformed or misinformed about what life with disability looks like. Disability is a natural and normal part of the human experience, it’s only when we view it as such that the space of in-between goes away.
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Self care it’s the hot topic these days. I’m constantly hearing things like take time for yourself, put your own oxygen mask on first or you need to be the best version of yourself for your child. Moms, we are the last ones to put ourselves first, I saw this first hand growing up with
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It’s been few years since I started this blog and almost eight years since Reagan was diagnosed with both Epilepsy and Cerebral Palsy, our lives have evolved and it’s time for this space to as well. Aptly titled, This is Epilepsy, as this is seemed to be the “it” phrase at the time, I wanted
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The past two months have been quite an adventure for our family. You name it, it happened. Everything from a water damaged basement (x2), to a broken oven, to a broken hot water heater, to several ER visits, to muscle spasms, and the very first broken bone. It’s been a real doozy! On top of
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I’ve started and stopped a post about what our life in quarantine over the past six weeks has been like, which until Wednesday had been going rather well, all things considered. Then it all fell down, not the past six weeks but the past nineteen months. Yesterday I watched an Epilepsy webcast featuring a local
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Over the past few weeks I’ve watched as Reagan has run to the car after school, pulling the door open, throwing her backpack and lunchbox in, then jumping in her seat proclaiming she had a great day. Almost every single day I hold back tears, I’m of course excited that she had a great day
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I don’t often talk about Reagan’s Cerebral Palsy, because her Epilepsy has been the medical condition with the most amount of need. But that’s doesn’t mean it’s not there, it’s been there all along (even before Epilepsy) and in my mom gut I knew it even before she was officially diagnosed. When Reagan was just
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Summers as a kid for me where filled with swimming at my grandparents pool with my cousins, running after the ice cream truck and staying up late catching fireflies. I look back and think how lucky I was to have such an incredible carefree 18+ plus summers, with people who are not just my family
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I have this vivid memory of walking into my sister-in-law’s house years before Reagan was born. She was watching a friend’s son after school. He sat in front of the TV with a block of cheese and she set a timer for him to finish the food. At the time I remember thinking it was
Rea of Hope 