Busy Special Needs Parents — I See You AND I Love You!!
Today is the day the curtain will come down and the lights will go out on my autism advocacy Facebook page (BurstingWithAutism) that I created a little over 3 years ago. While the page has 3,015 followers, engagement has been lacking — BIG TIME!
I struggled with the decision to transition to a brand new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/netfriending/
After hearing my struggle, my dear friend Roy Montero pointed out to me that INSANITY is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Indeed!! That is when the flashing lightbulb went off!! He was absolutely 100% right!! I had been posting videos, pictures, memes, personal stories, and now broadcasting to Facebook Live on my page for 3 years — not seeing my vision come to fruition. So I had to ask myself, what am I doing here and what is it that I want to accomplish with the information and experiences that I share?
More times than not, I hear THIS from special needs parents when I encourage their engagement within various social media platforms:
“I would love to comment on what you share, but I just don’t have the time.”
“Please don’t shut down your page. What you share has really helped me at just the right time I needed to hear it, BUT I don’t always have the time to give feedback.”
“I’m barely able to keep up with what I need to get done at home with all of our various therapy, doctor appointments, etc. so I probably won’t be able to participate in the special needs advocacy project you are working on.”
I get that. I understand that … I really do. Recently I found myself having to do the “single parenting thing” with my nonverbal 6 year old on the autism spectrum. I also work a full-time very demanding job in the corporate world. This is the very reason WHY I am reaching out to special needs parents. What I have learned through my journey is the importance of self-care for parents!!! If we don’t take moments to learn how to grow and nurture our minds AND fan the flames of our passion — our bright lights will dim!! That almost happened to me because I was burning out doing everything for everyone else, EXCEPT for ME! I want others to know it doesn’t have to be that way.
I strongly encourage you all to at least consider this …
This is my crazy (not so crazy) way of thinking … if each of us carve out just 20 or 30 minutes a week to share information we’ve acquired (after sooooo much digging to find it) … imagine all of the other people who would now share that information with many others. Then imagine all of the OTHER people we will connect with who have valuable information to share with us so that WE don’t have to dig to find it. I just want to take the existing texted conversation to a LIVE real-time environment so we can have FLUID conversations to spark ideas that we can’t otherwise get out of a texted conversation.
To all of the busy special needs parents who are reading this right now, I see you AND I love you! YOU are the reason I do what I do and why I am so passionate about connecting each of you with EACH OTHER!!! We all have something valuable to share.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”
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