As crazy as it sounds, Jake and I were not prepared for me contracting HIV. And we did not handle it well. It truly almost broke up our marriage/relationship. We got caught up in the riptide of emotions and thoughts that came from the shock of the diagnosis. I put a lot of blame on … Continue reading Maximus The Great: How HIV Prepared Us for Autism
I am an HIV positive woman. There, I said it. Now that that’s out of the way, let me answer the questions you may have: No, my children do not have HIV. Yes, women living with HIV can have healthy, negative children. I’m not dying anytime soon. I plan to live a long healthy … Continue reading Reintroduction
In my family, much like any other Latino family-we’re loud. The colors on our walls are bright, the food is seasoned with a cornucopia of flavors, we hug a lot, we kiss a lot. Everything we instinctively do, the cultural practices and traditions of who we are is a nightmare for autistic children. My son … Continue reading Maximus The Great: Being Latino & Autistic is hard.
Being the parent to a special needs child would be so much easier if the world wasn’t full of reminders that you’re kid, and thus your life are different or wrong, or sick, etc.
So you’ve gone and done your Special Education Evaluation with your school district and you wait. It may feel like forever, I know but soon you will have your ARD meeting (ARD = Admission, Review, Dismissal) where you’ll review the options for your child within the special education system. After the evaluation, the school district … Continue reading Maximus The Great: 3 things you should before your first ARD
It's the day after and the stirring silence from friends and family is an indicator of the fear leftover from election night. But I have to put that away right now. Because my son needs me. I want to rant and rave and be pissed then take a deep breath and say ok, I'm moving … Continue reading The day after, I had bigger fish to fry.
My forehead laid against the top of the steering wheel and it hurt as pressed up and down between my sobs. I hadn’t cried this hard in a while. I was defeated. My son’s meltdown kicked my ass. I spent hours picking apart what I’d wear and did my makeup with extra precision so I … Continue reading When meltdowns invade your marriage.
He’s three. He’s had three birthday parties. Three Christmases. Three Easter holidays. He’s three and has had double as many assessments than birthdays, holidays, and years on this earth. They started when he first failed a milestone survey at 2 and half and his Early Head Start teacher asked me to meet with ECI. At that … Continue reading Maximus The Great: It’s Official.
So many of you have shown such an outpouring of love during this process of diagnosing Max with potential autism. I'm getting lots of questions, suggestions, advice, and just love so we decided to dedicate an entire series of the blog to Maximus the Great. It’s been quite the journey the last several months. I first … Continue reading Maximus the Great: An Update
I sat in my stylist's chair taking in a few deep breaths. It'd been a stressful several weeks and I was finally able to get some "me" time squeezed in on a random Thursday. I wanted to do something fun with my hair and originally thought of putting in some pink, as I had just … Continue reading Blue.
Esposa Experience 