By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom I am learning that when I make a judgement of a person or place, I am usually quite wrong. It’s easy to judge people, places, and situations from a distance. We form opinions of those we have or haven’t met based on Twitter and...
By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom The best stories make us feel. They include losses that make the gains more incredible. The stories that stay with us include struggle and hurt. And our story includes lots of that. But I need to take this a little farther, because I am...
By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom Marissa and I have inherited my grandmother’s wanderlust. For most of Marissa’s life, I put off travel as unaffordable; irresponsible; impractical; impossible. I told her she could do these things when she was older and had the money to...
By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry Friedreich’s Ataxia occurs in about 1/50,000...
By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom We reached Myrtle Beach after what seemed an endless drive. Marissa was sore from surgery and feeling grumpy. I was on edge, without really knowing why, and feeling sad and exhausted after our week of parks and leaving friends...
By Dawn Graczyk, Sunshine Mom During our Orlando trip, I intentionally scheduled a few rest days. But one didn’t turn out quite like I’d planned. At 4am that morning, Anneliese woke me to tell me Marissa G-tube (feeding tube) fell out. I was certain that...