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The images that I saw of people with Down syndrome when our daughter Penny was born 18 years ago were largely black and white, grainy,
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I love taking a break from all sorts of things in the summer, and I also love returning to the rhythms of the fall. I’m
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I was scared when I found out our oldest daughter, Penny, had Down syndrome. My husband Peter and I were 28 years old, and we
A New Way of Seeing Our Humanity
My first traditionally-published book, A Good and Perfect Gift, tells the story of our daughter Penny’s early years after her diagnosis of Down syndrome. Even more
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Penny is off to college! She started her first year at Post University. I recorded a video with some of her thoughts over on Instagram.
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I remember being at a retreat where there were a lot of children present who were around the same age as Penny, our daughter who
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Tim Walz took center stage at the Democratic National Convention and so did his son Gus, who has a nonverbal learning disorder as well as
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Here in Connecticut, it is still summer. I know there are parts of the country where kids have been back in school for weeks, but
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I want to celebrate aging. I’m 47 years old, and I want to embrace the signs of age—freedom to be in this face and this
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Many people, when Penny was first born, talked to me about why it would be good for me to have a child with Down syndrome.
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The cool thing about universal design is that you don’t even notice it. I’ve been attending Hope Heals Camp at Camp McDowell in Nauvoo, Alabama for four summers now.1 I’ve
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I used to be afraid to set goals for our daughter Penny, who has Down syndrome. It felt like if we didn’t meet those goals,
Happy 16th Birthday, William
William turned 16 last week. We ordered Indian food and ate ice cream cake and sang a song in his honor. The chorus (set to
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As we head into another election cycle, I’m paying attention to the language politicians use to talk about people with disabilities. This is not a
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Last year, after we returned from a week at Hope Heals Camp, I wrote that camp “is not a place where we lay out a
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