A Mother’s Promise to Her Unique Children

Mommy is tired. Not the tired that sleep can fix, or a short vacation could cure, this is the tired that lives in the bones and settles into the soul. It’s the tired of fighting the world, and sometimes even fighting with the very child I’m fighting for, over chicken nuggets that aren’t the right size from the one place he’ll actually eat them. It’s the tired of a broken school system, a devious insurance company, a government that refuses to help the people who need it most. It’s
the tired of realizing not everyone is empathetic, not everyone understands, and some of the people who don’t get it are people who were once, or still are, in our circle.

There’s no PTO for special needs moms. And special needs dads are running on low battery too, trying to stay strong for a mommy who’s been told her whole life that she has to be the strong one.

It’s the fight against a school, a district, “educators” who were supposed to be allies and instead become gatekeepers, deciding what my child deserves before they’ve even truly tried to see him. It’s the fight for inclusion, real inclusion, not the token seat at the edge of the room, but a genuine place in the birthday party, the field trip, the team, the moments other children take for granted. It’s the fight to find childcare when I am desperately, achingly in need of a break, only to realize how few people are actually qualified, actually trained, actually trustworthy enough to keep my child safe while I catch my breath.

It’s the fight to keep my child’s nervous system out of fight or flight, to read the room before the world overwhelms him, to be his calm when everything around him is chaos. It’s the fight to find clothes that don’t feel like sandpaper against his skin, to introduce a new food or a new medicine without a battle, and it’s the fight in the emergency room, explaining, over and over, why my child cannot simply point to where it hurts, while a nurse looks at me like I’m the one who’s unwell for insisting something is wrong.

But whatever the struggle, whatever the next battle looks like, here is my promise to you. I will never stop. I will never stop fighting for you, never stop advocating for you, and more than anything, I will never stop loving you for exactly who you are, a child of the universe with a different ability, not a lesser one.

I will never let anyone blow out your light. I will never let you give up on your dream, even on the days you feel like giving up on it yourself. I will fight the systems, the barriers, the closed doors, so you can live in the world the way you see it, because the way you see it is beautiful, even when the rest of the world struggles to understand that.

I promise to protect your unique brain and your kind heart, the two things about you that make you unmistakably, wonderfully you. I promise to help you navigate a world that wasn’t built with you in mind, by making sure you always are. And I promise that you will get to be every bit of yourself, unapologetically, for as long as I have breath to fight for it.

This is Mommy’s promise. This is every special needs parent’s promise. And it is why we do what we do.
Raising Different Together ❤️