My friend (and sometimes mentor) Dunu Roy often accuses me of sugarcoating the difficult aspects of disability. He says I tend to use pictures like the one on the left, and avoid those like the one on the right.

I guess he’s right. I guess I figure people already have so many of those old images in their minds, they hardly need reinforcing. It’s the calm ones, the happy, smiling ones, the ones full of promise and achievement that I am interested in sharing because those are the ones so seldom seen.

But Dunu has a point. If parents and people with disabilities only see the easy images, their own struggles and sorrows perhaps seem harder to bear. Maybe they begin to think no one else has it quite as hard as they do. So this is to acknowledge the hard road we sometimes have to walk and the courage it takes to keep at it, to smile, to embrace the moment, as it is.