23 January 2013

Celebrating our new "normal"

A week ago tomorrow, I climbed out of my safe and and at times, vulnerable little world and shared the news of Luke's diagnosis with the broadest audience I'm capable of reaching on my own... Facebook. I'm not 100% sure why I was so nervous about sharing our story there. I am not embarrassed or sad nor does it bother me to verbally talk about it with others. It's not a secret and I'm actually excited about the prospect of impacting inclusion efforts for individuals with disabilities and/or delays. Most of all I love our son (both of them actually) and the reality is that it is what it is. We will make the most of things and we will have a good life.

Now that I have had a week's worth of retrospect to think about my experience with Facebook, I am overwhelmed! We had so many nice comments, "likes", and private messages!  I think part of why I was scared to post the information on Facebook is because I was a little afraid of the potential for discrimination or harsh comments and I'm just not ready to deal with that sort of stuff yet. I really just want to spend every moment right now enjoying Luke as a newborn, and celebrating the joy that he has brought into our lives.  In the last few months I've only had one person make an unkind comment to me about our new "normal" and it felt really awful. Fortunately, the reception we received with our "announcement" last week was only positive, uplifting and encouraging! Thank you to everyone who made an effort to show us some support... It made our new "normal" feel more normal than I expected and it was pretty awesome to celebrate Luke's arrival with so many people!!

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