In 2025, there are thousands of reels, social media accounts and testaments to the badassery that is required to live with CP. And though the world still has a long way to go, the pride, wholeness and strength of this community never ceases to amaze me.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a mental health treatment technique. This method involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories. EMDR's goal is to help you heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences.
On the days that having CP is challenging, it is extra important to take care of yourself, all those feelings and your body. When we can mention how we feel, then we figure out or manage what we need to feel better.
For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of being a mama and for equally as long, I just couldn’t comprehend the dream coming true, for me. Yet, I had NO frame of reference or role models for mamas with CP.
When you use alternate means of communication it can be really frustrating to go out in community. It is hard to know whether people are understanding you and whether they will take the time to listen. A lot of times it's hard for people to admit that they're not always comfortable with a device or a wheelchair or person who does things differently. So the more we can expose and educate people the better off we all will be. When we talk about acceptance, we're not just talking about people in society accepting people with disabilities. We're also talking about people with disabilities who are using alternate means of communication and how difficult it is for them to be out in the community.
I'm going to be talking about AAC and reading and some different things that you might not think about when you are doing those types of activities. When you're supporting reading for a nonverbal child, whether they use a high-tech system or a light-tech system, like a paperboard, you want to make sure that they have plenty of the opportunities to contribute to the experience. You want to be able to comment. You want to be able to talk about the people, the places, the things, and maybe the feelings that they have.
