Last Wednesday at 8:30 pm, well past my bedtime, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, hastily drawing on posters and t-shirts for a rally to preserve Early Intervention funding in Illinois.
“Mag,” John quipped from across the room, “you were born to be an advocate. You just needed a cause.”
This is true.
Before I had Tessa, if asked what my hobbies were, I had no answer. I’m not boring (I don’t think), just never had something that totally captured my interest. Now, I have Down syndrome and special needs advocacy. It’s an odd thing to qualify as a hobby, I suppose. It’s not something that I do for fun necessarily. In a way though, it’s something that I do because it feels productive and important and that is fun in my mind.
I recognize, of course, that this brand of advocacy is not for everyone. Heaven knows that I’ve had enough conversations with enough people to know that some find us to be “takers, not makers” and unworthy of such silly requests as funding for basic therapies and a place in the classroom.
Ugh. We’ll be addressing this later.
In any case, all of this is important because tomorrow, October 1st, marks the beginning of Down Syndrome Awareness Month and the 31 for 21 Challenge. Last year, we wrote about 31 things that we have learned since we had Tessa. This year, we’re sharing 31 mostly simple ways that you can advocate for people with Down syndrome (or people with special needs in general). I would never presume to tell you that just because this is my cause that it has to be yours, too. But, if you should want to make a small difference in the lives of people like Tessa, in honor of this month or just because you want to, we are excited to share some ways to make a difference.
Thanks for joining us.
To hear our radio interview at the Early Intervention rally last week… click here: http://wuis.org/post/funding-worries-persist-parents-disabled-children
Yo soy La Lay 