06/18/2026
If you have known me personally for maybe 2 seconds, you know that I have 3 kids at home with special needs/neurodivergence. I am not what you would call an immensely private person. I wear my heart and emotions on my sleeve, on my face, in my body and I share my story with intention and conviction so as to demystify neurodivergence and increase acceptance. I like sharing stories and words are something I’m pretty good at - writing was always my favorite subject but there are days I stumble with words especially when they aren’t behind a pen or a computer screen, using the right words with staff, with kids and parents - some days it is a lot. Some days I say things I wish I didn’t say; some days I have the right words and some days I can’t find the words when I need them or the words I say hurt. In other words, I’m human and fyi neurodivergence is genetic 😉
When I share about my own family with the families we serve, mostly to provide comfort and to normalize diagnoses and struggles, they often ask if Kendall Miller and I got into this nonprofit gig - helping people read - because we too have neurodivergent kids… a really logical conclusion. In fact, when I was getting my doctorate 15 years ago or so, one thing I learned that stuck with me is that researchers usually study themselves - we are all most interested in what matters in our own lives. The grand irony in my life is that the kids came after the work, after the research, and after I thought I had the answers with all the right words for other families. News flash 💥 for kids with significant and complex reading needs there are no easy answers, no formulas and no quick fixes. So now, I try to tell parents I will walk with them on the journey with their child and help them live into the answers.
My late mentor - the much beloved Twyla Miranda at Texas Wesleyan University shared this quote with me in my very first masters reading class in 2000 and it lived on my fridge for a long time. I wondered why and what it had to do with teaching reading but today I find it speaks better than I could.
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Rainer Maria Wilke
We are all living our way to the answers. Let’s be gentle with each other on the journey because you never really know what folks are carrying. To all of you out there cheering us on - thank you. Your words and support mean more than you will ever know. 💙💚💛💜
