Mary Jo Hebert, writing in the Albany Times Union, is the mother of a 17-year-old son with “a slew of disabilities no one saw coming.” She says her journey has taught her many lessons; among them: resilience, flexibility and love. An excerpt:

I learned that the only good reason to have a child is to raise a decent human being – the underachievers as well as the overachievers – and if you’re counting on producing an athlete or scholar, you better think again. Three quarters of young couples in a recent survey said they would choose abortion if told their fetus had a 50 percent chance of growing up to be obese. If you’re one of them, don’t take the risk.

I learned to expect the unexpected, a good reminder for anyone considering parenthood. On what should have been one of the happiest days of my life, I received the worst possible news, and here’s the part worth noting: I survived.

I pieced back together my broken heart and found a way to enjoy life anyway. I tossed out the old yardsticks for measuring success and created new ones.

In a culture that turns athletes into heroes and defines beauty as perfection, I learned to love a child who is slow, clumsy and imperfect.

I built a new life with different expectations. And I learned a new definition of what it means to have something in the family: the courage it takes to let go of the child you want to embrace the child you get.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 7:25 am and is filed under commentary, families, NOT2BEMISSED, parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.