My New Look

Sooooooooooo...... what do ya think? Do you like it?

If you're reading this from Google Reader or Noah's old blog then you're not able to see it. You'll have to go to our blog site at: www.recoveringnoah.blogspot.com .

Anyway, I decided it was time for a change.

I was looking at some autism blogs yesterday - and there are a lot of Recovering So-and-So blogs out there - and I realized that my blog is doing a serious injustice to someone who stumbles upon it looking for autism treatment and advice.

Let's face it. It's been a long time since this blog was solely about autism.

At the time I started this blog, it WAS all about Noah and autism, but about a year ago that all changed. It's going to sound really strange, but Nandini has been a catalyst for a lot of positive change in our lives. Adopting her sort of symbolized that life DOES go on. And by doing so, it created a new family for our lives - full of new dreams and new hopes. In a strange way, it allowed us to heal and say, "Okay. This is our life. We're not going to be stuck in the past of "what used to be" or "what could have been". I know it may not make sense, but it helped push us forward.

And I needed that because I was stuck in the past and caught up in this fervent desire for Noah to recover.

Don't get me wrong. It's still there. All I have to do is think about him outliving us and my eyes well up.

Actually, it's happening right now.

At the same time, though, I've come to a place of peace where I'm finally able to start making new dreams for our family and having new hopes for Noah and new goals for our lives.

Autism still gets me down. Changing diapers on an almost 7 year-old gets me down. Not being able to go certain places or do certain things gets me down. Watching him cry and not knowing why... it gets me down.

But I'm able to find joy in Noah and I can celebrate him. He is pure bliss.

So, that's why I changed the name of the blog to Recovering Noah... Discovering Me.

People with special needs used to frighten the heck out of me. When we found out the week we travelling to get Noah that he had cerebral palsy (after having his referral for 7 months and not knowing), I remember saying to our adoption agency..

"Well, at least it's not something like autism."

Wow. God knew, didn't he?

I NEVER thought I could handle having a child with special needs - much less three of them! (Yes.. Eli received a Visual Processing Disorder and Sensory Motor Planning Disorder diagnosis a few months ago. That's another post in itself).

But God showed me that I could handle it. Noah showed me that I could handle it.

And so that's how, in all of this, that I've come to discover me.