“It was as if I started off with my fist clenched tight around a vision of a child and, as Penny grew, I slowly opened my fingers. The bits and pieces of my fictional daughter scattered in the wind, and I was left with an open palm.” 

We are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of A Good and Perfect Gift, my memoir about our spiritual journey to receive our daughter Penny as a gift, on September 1! 

I still receive emails and messages regularly from parents who have read our story as one piece of their own journey. It’s a road to receiving our children as the particular, unexpected, broken and beautiful human beings they all are. But it is also a road to receiving ourselves, and one another, as the particular, unexpected, broken and beautiful human beings we all are. A road to receiving one another not with clenched fists but with an open palm.

Learn more with Amy Julia:

• A Good and Perfect Gift
• Sara Groves Endorses A Good and Perfect Gift
• My Daughter With Down Syndrome Helped Me Understand Racism

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