Jillian Heilman

When your child is first diagnosed with autism, your mind doesn’t go to driving. It goes to therapies. To milestones. To questions you didn’t even know existed yet. You start learning a new language as you enter a world full of IEPs, services, and advocacy. You focus on the now, because the now feels big enough. Driving? That feels like a lifetime away....Until one day, it isn’t. In a recent episode of our podcast Strength Happens , Janine and I interviewed Caryn Readdy and her son Dalton. ...

This is a hard post to write. But it is an important one. Halle is the one who made me a mom. Her start in life was beyond difficult. She was born early, a tiny 35-weeker, and far sicker than anyone expected. She struggled to breathe, and feeding was a challenge from the beginning. In the NICU, she was fed through an NG tube (nasogastric tube), a small tube that went through her nose into her stomach, typical for a preemie. She was our little fighter and was discharged in less than three...

“Reglan… Zithromax… Phenergan… Versed.” Believe it or not, those were some of the first words Halle spoke at the age of three. Her speech was delayed due to poor oral motor tone and mild hearing loss. But slowly, she found her voice. Well… sort of. Okay, technically her first word beyond the basics was actually “fuck” ...but that’s a story for another time. Let’s just say I learned a very important lesson that year about what I could and could not say in front of my child. John was not a...