While we are pleased with the number of services available for adults with disabilities in our new home state of CO, one that has continued to elude us throughout Skyler’s entire life is respite. Over the years we’ve met countless providers, filled out paperwork, waited on lists, and hoped each new opportunity would finally be…
Tomorrow morning, Skyler will undergo his third colonoscopy since being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2018. It’s a routine procedure designed to help his medical team determine whether his medications are working and whether his disease is finally under some control. Like every parent of a child with Crohn’s knows, the scope itself isn’t the…
My 21-year-old daughter and I were chatting the other day and one of her questions caught me off guard. She asked if I had decided on an age when her brother would move somewhere outside of our home. At first, I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. The truth is, I don’t have a specific…
There are seasons in life when everything feels uncertain—when decisions carry weight and the future feels like a question mark. And then there are seasons when, somehow, everything begins to fall into place in a way that feels too intentional to be coincidence. Since making the decision last August to move to Colorado for Skyler—to…
There’s a certain kind of strength many women carry that rarely gets questioned. We push through. We power on. We ignore the signals—because someone always needs us more. A few days ago, I was admitted to the hospital for an unexpected appendectomy. For over a month, I had been dealing with pretty intense back pain….
Happy 23rd Birthday, Skyler What a year it’s been. Just one year ago, you were facing one of the hardest transitions of your life — aging out of your autism center, leaving behind everything familiar, and stepping into months of uncertainty, with no programs, no routine, and very little connection to the world outside our…
Last weekend I had the honor of delivering the keynote at the Rising Moms Caregiver Retreat and I left that room feeling incredibly inspired. When you gather a room full of caregiving moms together, you quickly realize something powerful: these are women who carry more than most people ever see. The sleepless nights, the appointments,…
One of the hardest balances caregivers walk is managing expectations while still holding hope for a safe and meaningful future. My nonverbal, profoundly autistic 22-year-old son, Skyler, is enjoying his adult day program and opportunities to be out in the community. But during a recent outing, he became dysregulated — smacking a few employees and…
When I first saw this caricature of myself, I smiled. It’s fun. It’s colorful. It captures a lot of what people see when they look at my life—writer, speaker, podcast host, sales leader, advocate. The microphone. The books. The ideas. The stages. The conversations. And yes, those hats are real. I wear them all proudly….
One of the hardest parts of being a parent caregiver isn’t just the exhaustion or the burnout—it’s the quiet loss of connection. And almost no one talks about it. We spend our days managing the pressures of caring for our special needs children, and over time our world narrows. We become so hyper-focused on caregiving…