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ninie

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But where I saw the gift of her calm,
attentive presence, an occupational therapist who came over to our house to work with Fiona saw a child who was neurologically dull
She was, this therapist was especially disappointed
that Fiona wasn't rolling over yet, and so she told me we needed to wake her neurology up. One day she leaned over my daughter's body,
took her tiny shoulders, jostled her and said, Wake up! Wake up!
We had a few therapists visit our house that first year, and they usually focused on what they thought was bad about my kid
I was really happy when Fiona started using her right hand to bully a dangling stuffed sheep,
but the therapist was fixated on my child's left hand
Fiona had a tendency not to use this hand very often, and
she would cross the fingers on that hand. So the therapist said
we should devise a splint, which would rob my kid of the ability to actually use those fingers, but it would at least force them into some position that looked normal
In that first year, I was starting to realize a few things. One:
Ancient parables aside, my kid had some bad therapists
Two: I had a choice. Like a person offered to swallow a red pill or a blue pill,
I could choose to see my daughter's differences as bad;
I could strive toward the goal that her therapists called,
You'd never know. They loved to pat themselves on the back when they could say about a kid, "You'd never know he was 'delayed' or 'autistic' or different."
I could believe that the good path was the path that erased as many differences as possible
Of course, this would have been a disastrous pursuit, because at the cellular level,
my daughter had rare blueprints. She wasn't designed to be like other people. She would lead a rare life
So, I had another choice
I could drop my story
that neurological differences and developmental delays and disabilities was bad, which means I could also drop my story
that a more able-bodied life was better
I could release my cultural biases about what made a life good or bad
and simply watch my daughter's life as it unfolded with openness and curiosity
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[3] Good and bad are incomplete stories we tell ourselves