Your Stories

By: Fatima Hafiz  3/21/2022 Today marks World DownSyndrome Day. According to the World Health Organization, every year, the estimated incidence of Down syndrome is between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 1,100 live births worldwide. The children with this condition, are comparatively fewer in number and different than most others of their age. While their ways of expressing themselves, interacting with the others, communicating with the community are unique, they are not deformed. Down syndrome or  trisomy 21 is not an illness. There is nothing wrong with these beautiful children having extra genetic material from chromosome 21. It's true that...

  I’m sure every single one of you remembers the day that you received that wonderful news that you were going to be parents, hands down the best day of your life, right? As if on autopilot–your thoughts immediately run away with you and already you are looking into the mirror ball and seeing this perfect and blissful journey up ahead, through life with your bundle of joy. But alas. It often is not as black & white as that now, is it? Upon one of your checkups before the baby arrives–your doctor shares the news with you that the...

We sat there, I was cold and scared, terrified I would say.  Her dad had no expression on his face.   I had her sitting on my lap, she was so little, only a few days and she would be turning 3 years old.  She was fidgeting, barely acknowledging the psychologist trying to engage her.  She couldn't answer his questions, she didn't play with the toys appropriately.  I nervously tried to excuse her lack of attention.   He just took notes, he smiled with kindness like trying to calm us down.  After an hour of evaluation, he said the words.  He explained...

 SKY was a kind and friendly little owlet. He had soft blueish grey feathers and big, beautiful owl eyes that glowed in the dark. Sky looked like other little owls except that he was different. Sky couldn’t talk the way the other forest animals could, all he could say was “Hoo.”  That was alright, because his mommy, Neblina always seemed to know what he meant and seemed to know everything about her little owl baby. Sky also didn’t eat meat the way other owls do, the texture and taste made him feel uncomfortable, so, Neblina took him foraging for fruits...

    Our world has been experiencing a pandemic. All of us have been living in unprecedented times of quarantine and isolation for the last couple of years. Children forced to adopt distant learning at home and once back in schools, mandated to wear masks and practice social distancing. Parents have struggled with loss of jobs or for many needing to adopt to a new way of working from home and feeling isolated from their social lives. We have all felt the loss of heartfelt hugs with friends and firm handshakes with strangers; even turning away instead of saying “bless...