October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. This pic says it all… champion siblings, and a mom holding on to all of them in the background.
A good friend of mine, when talking about the fight of advocacy, said after years of experience raising her child that she is but a bandaid on this system. She is right. This type of advocacy is a cultural shift. But as I look at the picture, I think of my daughters who did not choose to have a brother with Ds and yet they do. Their advocacy is just part of their being.
So all that I do, all that I have done, is but a bandaid. But they move forward in life doing advocacy without even realizing it. They have lived it, so they go forward making decisions that include love and inclusion without ever thinking of it as advocacy. I am in the background, throwing bandaids everywhere I can, while they move forward where I pray it’s not a bandaid, but a new way of being—each generation growing new shades of skin that do not require such bandaids.