Written in 2014.
My first daughter was born 16 years ago, on June 27. She was born three months early at 28 weeks. She weighed less than three pounds and fit in the palms of my hands. She then spent a week on the ventilator, and 53 days in the hospital. After she was born she faced a number of complications from prematurity, and I knew she would have a lot of challenges to overcome in order to catch up with her peers. I guess she’s been a continuous lesson in overcoming adversity.
By the age of three, she was nonverbal. As in, she didn’t talk at all. We put her in preschool, and things started to change, quickly.
By the time she started kindergarten, she was being pulled from the classroom 40 to 60% of the time to get additional help. By the end of first grade she was reading at grade level, and performing at grade level in all her classes. She was also diagnosed as autistic.
That diagnosis explained a great deal. Why she sees the world differently. Why the noise from the AC unit in the classroom upset her. Why clothing textures were a problem, and still are. It also explains her quirky sense of humour, and why she doesn’t get sarcasm or being facetious.
Still, she kept making forward progress. By the end of elementary school and into middle school she started taking honours classes. She completed her Girl Scout Bronze Award in fifth grade, then her Silver Award in seventh. She also rode horses religiously. And sold Girl Scout cookies.
Every class has been a battle of wills. She is very determined, this daughter of mine. It takes her longer to process information from a class, so she has to study longer and harder. This year she was recognised on her varsity horseback riding team as the most dedicated and hardworking. Because she works hard. Very hard.
It’s a lesson in overcoming adversity, and sticking with it. She has overcome so many hurdles, and continues to work diligently on her schoolwork. Now she’s in mostly honours classes, and on the varsity horseback riding team for both English and Western. One day she’d like to be a doctor, or a businesswoman. I don’t doubt that she’ll achieve it, because she is hardheaded and stubborn — just like her mother. And she will be awesome.
What about you? Have you overcome adversity?
A note added later: this was written in 2014, and it reads now like a snapshot taken just before the road got considerably harder. The years that followed brought challenges neither of us anticipated, and they eventually took us somewhere I never expected to go — into advocacy work, and into conversations about policy at a national level.
That’s a longer story, and one I’ll tell properly in its own place rather than tacked onto the end of this.
What this post got right has held up, though. She is determined. She works harder than almost anyone I know. And she keeps going.
