more on my retreat

I am sorry that I am going to break this down in several posts but I don't like to write a book and I believe if it's too long people may get bored. As soon as I got there, I got hit with the question how many children do you have? and of course what child has the disability? So, I said I have 3 children. A girl 20, a boy 16 and a boy 11 who is on the autism spectrum.  So, then I get hit with the question do the older children help with my youngest child. I basically said yes and felt like a fraud.
Then, after my cry, I met two women who I would spend the most of my time with. We all sat down and had to go around the room with our pictures and talk about how child and what they have taught us.  I just felt like I had to share the whole truth. A quick version of it.
I told them how my son is on the autism spectrum and how that his needs taught me to be more independent cause I had to force myself to learn how to drive to get my son to his therapy's on time. Then, I said my son has taught us to think outside the box. We have to deal with struggle after struggle and we are always brain storming ways to help him. I held up the picture with all three of my children and shared how I am reunited with my daughter that was placed for adoption and how the picture was my children's first meeting.

All of our children went up on a board and just hearing all the stories of the special needs children made me feel not so alone. I also felt very lucky cause there were a couple Mom's who had children who were living beyond their life expectancy for their condition.

These are most of the children but their were some Mom's who forgot the pictures.