Hello Again.

Oh, my poor, neglected blog. This is what happens when you let life get in the way of the Internet.

So...with the exception of my little Amy Chua post, I've been kind of absent for a while. There are many reasons for this. In no particular order:

1. My eldest child had a bat mitzvah. It was awesome, but it also took a lot of my time.

2. We planned this whole "move to Israel" thing, sold our house, packed our stuff, and, uh, moved to Israel.

3. I haven't quite known what to say.

Let's expand on 3 a bit, shall we? I started this blog the day we met with the neurologist who gave us D's preliminary diagnosis, which turned out to be spot on. That was the beginning of The Dark Time. And my God, was it dark. For a long time. I blogged a lot, and that helped so much. And I read a lot of special needs blogs, and that helped, too.

Lately, the sun seems to have broken through. Now, I don't want to exaggerate. My son is still disabled -- and just typing those words makes me start to cry -- but on the whole, on the whole, I am far more okay with that reality than I ever thought I could be. I know there are so many things my beautiful boy will never do. And even though there is a piece of me that will never fully accept any kind of limitations placed on him -- because what the hell kind of mother would? -- I am beginning to be able to envision a future for my D. that is hopeful. It is different from the dreams I thought I would have for my children, but I am getting better at realizing that there is more than one version of success.

Basically, the last 3 minutes to the contrary, I don't sit around sobbing all the time anymore. This is good. But for a while I thought that it meant I should stop blogging, because, well, the point of this blog, in a nutshell was, "OH MY GOD, MY LIFE IS TRAGIC BECAUSE MY SON HAS SPECIAL NEEDS AND I HATE EVERYBODY."

So. I thought about stopping, about starting something new, about just closing the computer and quietly walking away forever. But then I thought about the children. my constant and unrelenting need for attention. one of the things I wanted to know back at the start of this journey: "Will I be OK?" And the answer is, YES. And so I think it's important to keep writing this blog -- even though the focus may ultimately shift, even though there may be less WOE IS ME (although I can assure you that there will still be PLENTY of I HATE EVERYONE AND I AM BETTER THAN EVERYONE ANYWAY), even though I may not hyper-focus on the details of my son's progress or his failures. I think it's important for parents at other stages of this journey to know that I survived The Dark Times. I pushed through. I came out into the light, and sporting Chanel sunglasses, no less. And you will, too.