Our daughter Penny is 20 years old and has Down syndrome. I cannot believe the outpouring of support, encouragement, and advice we received from far and wide—including multiple Delta executives and flight attendants!—about her upcoming solo flight! I’m struck by two things.
One, that people really love helping other people when it is clear and limited in scope—whether that’s giving a word of advice or being willing to lend a hand in an airport.
Two, as I wrote to someone from the Delta Global Communications Team who reached out to me:
“as the mother of a child with a disability, I never thought about how much the policies of businesses like airlines would affect our everyday lives and her ability to experience, as you so wonderfully put it, the ‘thrill of solo travel.’”
In other words, here are two different examples of the interdependent web we weave that allows all of us to navigate the world both as individuals and in community. It’s really beautiful when it works.
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Amy Julia Becker desires to challenge assumptions about the good life, proclaim the inherent belovedness of every human being, and help us envision and build a world of belonging where everyone matters. Amy Julia invites people to reimagine the good life through her writing and speaking on disability, faith, and culture. She is the author of several books, including To Be Made Well, White Picket Fences, Small Talk, and A Good and Perfect Gift. She is a guest opinion writer for national publications and hosts two podcasts: Take the Next Step and Reimagining the Good Life. Becker is a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv). She is a member of the Disability Ministry Network and the Alliance for Disability Justice and Ethics in Reproductive Genetics. She lives with her husband and their three children in western Connecticut.
In fourth grade, Penny’s teacher reported to me that Penny’s classmates didn’t know she had a disability. Her presentation about Down syndrome surprised them. To them, she was just Penny. They didn’t think of her as a patient or a diagnosis. They thought of her as a classmate, a student, a friend. That fact signals one of the triumphs of special education in America over the past few decades.
