My third daughter has just started her senior year in high school, with one of her classes being Advanced Placement English literature. She told me that she and her classmates get to choose some of the books they will read over the course of this school year and showed me a list of about 80…
I’ve heard a few times that Winston Churchill experienced depression and referred to it as his “black dog.” It may or may not be completely accurate, but it has become one of those anecdotes that’s oft repeated. I’ve had some black dog times throughout my life, where the giant mutt mistakes me for a dog…
Goodreads says I read 41 books this year. I’m going to pick 10 of my favorites, just because, hey, 10 is a nice round number. I’ll even helpfully divvy them up by genre. Interestingly enough, my favorites were fairly evenly divided among these three categories; some years, that’s not the case. I’m linking each to…
I’ve already blogged about having an adult daughter with Down syndrome and how that’s so much different from having a younger child with DS. It’s tougher in many ways: the gap between that child and your other non-DS kids, in addition to the gap between that child and most everyone else, is so much wider…
Read more Down syndrome PLUS other challenges, like mental health
I have been seriously fighting with my weight (or just resigning myself, unhappily, to it) for a decade. Before that, I had to stay vigilant, and I had to count calories and work out to lose weight after each of my pregnancies, but it wasn’t an all-out war. In the past 10 years, since I…
I read this blog post thanks to a friend sharing it on Facebook, and I had too many ideas to share in a comment, so I’m writing my own post with my takes on the idea. Liane Kupferberg Carter wrote “For Some Moms, the Nest May Never Be Empty.” I wrote last year that my second daughter,…
Every year I like to do a round-up of the best books of the year. Since I don’t always read freshly published books, this isn’t technically a “best books OF 2016”; it’s a “my favorites that I READ in 2016.” However, that being said, many of them are pretty new. So let’s get started. I…
The holidays can bring such joy — families gather together to share specially prepared meals, exchange gifts, and savor the particular magic that seems to permeate the air. Frosty windowpanes frame displays of trees and candles whose lights dance about merrily. The cold makes noses jauntily pink, and hot cocoa and spiced cider warm everyone…
Over 18 years ago, I found out through a blood test and amniocentesis that my second child had Down syndrome. Back then, there wasn’t much in the way of the Web, so I went to the library. I found one book that talked a bit about children with DS and had a few pictures that…
Read more New territory: Having an adult child with Down syndrome
Part of the reason I write this blog is to document my particular struggles with mental health. Having to deal with some kind of challenge that’s within the range of mental health is just as common as dealing with some kind of difficulty with any kind of physical health. In other words, either category is EXTREMELY…
Read more Treatment for mental health is hard because diagnosis is even harder
