When Lydia was born & I was first combing the internet trying to learn about families of individuals w/ Down Syndrome, I came across the hashtag #theluckyfew, & honestly, it shocked me. “The Lucky Few? LUCKY?” I wondered? That seemed like toxic positivity to me—reaching too far. ‘Delusional,’ was the world that came to mind, actually. “These poor people,” I thought, “faced with no other life, have convinced themselves that this is a GOOD thing as a way to cope.”
. . .
I knew nothing about the disability community. What I DID know, the opinions I HAD been exposed to up to that point in my life, whether subtle or overt, were largely steeped in prejudice. And this was the result. I viewed my own daughter’s birth as an impossible tragedy to overcome, & could not FATHOM ever calling ourselves, our life, “lucky.”
. . .
Oh friends. If you learn nothing else from me, ever—please learn how dead wrong a person can be, because I was. You may look at our lives & see hard (and you know what, me too 😅) but hard exists in every life. And IN SPITE of the hard, in spite of the heart surgeries & the upcoming pacemaker stuff & even this week’s RSV vacay to the ER, I am telling you—NO ONE IN THIS HOUSE WOULD TRADE IT. No one. We all believe that we are LUCKY 🍀 to have this girl & her extra chromosome in our lives & to have the opportunity to learn all the extra lessons we get to learn—and experience all the extra JOY and LAUGHTER and HOPE and LOVE and MIRACLES we get, because of it. It is a singular thing. It is phenomenal. I did not know before Lydia. I did not understand. But now I do. Now I KNOW (bone deep) that those w/ disabilities aren’t just to be pitied or tolerated or a good service project… they are INDIVIDUALS & friends & we can learn SO MUCH about others, ourselves, the world & Bigger Things by being w/ them.
Now I hope to show other people these opportunities that I was missing thru inclusion, while at the same time opening doors for Lydia. Truly, everyone benefits.
. . .
I always say Lydie gave me new eyes & that she changed everything. She did.
“I once was blind, but now I see.”
