This Is What Vulnerability Looks Like When A Special Needs Mom Writes

A plug for the emotional memoir Forever Boy

I think a lot of people have difficulty with being vulnerable with themselves and with others

I know I do.

There is something inherently scary with seeing the truth about your life and deciding to share it with other people.

You feel naked and exposed, but the people with the gift of being vulnerable in their writing help us to learn to be more open in our writing.

It’s hard to choose the right publication for a story, and I think I should have published my last story in Know Thyself, Heal Thyself because of its authenticity and vulnerability and being a personal story about loss, struggle, and failure.

Her viral video

My story focused on how one mom’s video went viral after she decided to share her struggles of being a special needs mom, her difficulty adjusting her expectations for her son, and her journey to accepting her son’s autism diagnosis.

She hit record on her phone one morning and shared her story with her world about how she feels exhausted and not sure if she can carry on.

What she shared was raw and beautiful in its vulnerability and that’s what made her video go viral. It spoke to thousands of other moms just like her feeling the same thing she was feeling.

Here is my story about the day she could no longer fake it and hit record on her phone:

Swenson has a memoir, “Forever Boy,” coming out April 5. It is about her own experience as a special needs mom, and it is a roller coaster ride of many emotions. I couldn’t put her book down as I devoured it, and neither will you either.

It describes the often secret world of autistic families, and she describes every feeling in her journey to reach acceptance of her son’s autism in beautiful sweeping, extended passages capturing her deepest emotions on the page.

Her ability to write with prolonged vulnerability is why I feel Know Thyself, Heal Thyself is the best audience to introduce this amazing mom. Her book is about getting lost in supporting her son, an experience I think both moms and dads can relate to, and rediscovering a different self.

It is about overcoming the fracture in her marriage caused by two people reacting in different ways to the same life-changing event, and the heart of the story is her courageous fight to give her son a spot at the table of life.

Cooper is eleven, and Kate has two other sons and a daughter, and she takes you into her family and shows you motherhood from a different perspective. She shows you the grit, sorrow, and pain it takes to see joy and beauty.

It is destined to be made into a Hallmark movie, I can feel it in my bones, so learn from Kate how to be more vulnerable and enjoy a gripping story of her family’s unique journey.

Thank you for reading my story.

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Or check out my YouTube video on 10 Publications to write for on Medium.

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