At 19 I was a single mom to a special needs child. I looked for a community to talk to, to understand what I was going through, to help me navigate through, however in 1990, small-town, middle-America, that was tricky. The support group for parents of special needs children didn’t work out, too much info, too much anger, too soon. The young mothers group, I had very little in common with. I was worried about heart defects and early education intervention and they were worried about court dates and new boyfriends. That said, the leader of the young mothers group arranged for a few speakers to travel to various High Schools and she asked me to join.

We sat on the gym “stage” platform. In front of about, let’s say a gym full of teenagers, their elders by only a few years. We talked about our kids and our lives with the baby. It wasn’t meant to be scary, so much as realistic