Emilie's world tour unites children with disabilities

Emilie, 9 (centre), is travelling the world from her home of Lyon, France to meet children with disabilities, learn about their experiences and break social isolation. Emilie has cerebral palsy. Most recently she and her mother Agnès spent three weeks in Peru. During this time they lived with three families: one had a child with Down syndrome, one had a child with autism and one had a child with cerebral palsy. "We followed their everyday...

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One moment, forever changed

Sofia Ali remembers her brother Malik as a “really athletic four-year-old, enthusiastic about learning and the best brother I could ever have. Then everything collapsed.” Malik went in for a 15-minute surgery to remove his tonsils, had unexpected complications and suffered a severe brain injury. He spent more than a year in hospital and lost the ability to speak, walk and use his hands. Almost 10 years later, Sofia...

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Dear Compassion

I just returned from a moving workshop at Mount Sinai Hospital called Postcards from the Edge: Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form.  It was given by Ronna Bloom, the poet in residence at Mount Sinai. The focus was compassion fatigue, the natural stress that arises in health workers caring for, and wanting to help, someone who is suffering or traumatized.  Ronna described it as "the cost of caring for...

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I loved it

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Sideswiped

By Louise Kinross "Is he mentally retarded?" she asks. I am holding my 19-month-old son in my arms at a visit to a dental clinic in a children's hospital. I've been up all night giving Ben Ventolin masks for his asthma, and I'm still reeling from her previous questions, asked in a most pitiful tone. "Will he ever walk?" "Is he short for his age?" This student—training to be a pediatric dentist—knows that...

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Sitting in judgment

In October, New Jersey State Supreme Court Justice Helen E. Hoens (right) stepped down, saying she developed the qualities essential in a judge by raising her son Charlie (left), who has severe autism. Here she writes about how living in the ‘margin-world of autism’ prepared her for seven years on the bench. By Helen E. Hoens The New Jersey Supreme Court is the highest appellate court in the state. Once we decide an issue,...

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What's wrong with wanting a 'mini-me?'

This comment on the blog of a parent stopped me in my tracks (if you read down in the post you'll see the comment reprint in full).  It’s from a young adult with autism. She was responding to the parent’s post about hope.  In it, the young woman with autism encourages parents to hope that with appropriate supports their child will become a happy, fulfilled person. But she asks us to take a really close...

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Anne Geddes' lens reflects resilience

Australian photographer Anne Geddes is known for capturing the innocence of babies in bumble-bee and acorn costumes that replicate life in nature. But her latest project it not about innocence. It’s about resilience. Geddes is photographing a dozen children and youth from around the world who’ve lost limbs and digits to Meningococcal disease—a deadly bacterial infection that inflames brain and spine tissue and infects the blood. Geddes says...

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Taking 'the good' for a spin

I've been reading Hardwiring Happiness, which shows us how we can take in and savour more of the good moments in our lives, retraining our brains which have evolved into a kind of "velcro for the bad," as neuropsychologist Rick Hansen calls it. “Over the course of evolution, animals that were nervous, driven and clinging were more likely to pass on their genes, and these inclinations are now woven into our DNA," Hansen writes....

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