How Community Promotes Flourishing
Where do you want to be in five years? Who do you want to be in five years? What do you want to be true of your everyday life in…
Love Is Stronger Than Fear Podcast | Season 4
Love is stronger than fear. I first wrote those words on the heels of Donald Trump’s election back in 2016, and they became a truth I returned to again and again…
Election Aftermath
It’s been a stressful week for most Americans when it comes to the state of our nation in the election aftermath. Even without a final verdict on who will be…
Announcing Missing Out on Beautiful, Part Two
Download FREE E-Book Our daughter Penny was born on December 30, 2005. She was diagnosed with Down syndrome a few hours later. It’s almost hard to remember what it felt…
S3 E15 | Who Belongs? Disability and the Built World with Sara Hendren
How does “the built world”—the chairs, rooms, and streets that guide our bodies every day— implicitly ascribe worth to human beings? How does the built world welcome or exclude individuals…
Dreaming and Planning With Our Teenager With Down Syndrome
We had a planning meeting last February for our teenage daughter, Penny, who has Down syndrome. Penny invited friends, family, and teachers to join her for this conversation. Dreaming and…
My Daughter With Down Syndrome Helped Me Understand Racism
How did disability help me understand racism? I am white, married, educated, and affluent. Our daughter Penny was born into many of these same categories, and yet she was also…
S3 E2 | Living into the Really Real with Micha Boyett
How can we talk about race and disability without conflating the two? How can white, able-bodied, neurotypical people enter into this conversation? What is the difference between “white fragility” and…
The Ordinary Goodness of a Life with Down Syndrome, Even Now
Our daughter Penny is 14. She loves Taylor Swift and Fuller House and the Yankees. She betrays many signs of becoming a typical teenager: she groans when I wake her…
Why I Won’t Tell You What Happened When Penny, Our Daughter with Down Syndrome, Went to the Middle School Dance
I've read a few comments over the years about how parents stop writing about their kids with disabilities once they are out of the elementary years. Some people suggested…
