Manoj was born on October 5, 1980, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. When he was just seven months old, our family was making the drive from Edmonton to Toronto to drop off Manoj’s grandparents. During the journey, Manoj developed a fever and experienced his first febrile seizure. In that moment, our lives changed forever—especially Manoj's. As time went on, the effects of his seizures became more apparent. Manoj faced challenges with independence, understanding emotions and social cues, and...

Tavish was born on December 30, 2000, at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, on avery snowy day during what felt like a record winter storm. He arrived 11 days past his due date after a long and difficult labour that lasted more than 30 hours. Because of the prolonged labour, Tavish was born with a large caput on his head and remained in the hospital for five days after birth. Even through those early challenges, Tavish brought so much joy into our lives from the very beginning. His first...

In one of my earliest memories of life as Jesse's mom, I am sitting alone in a tiny room at Sick Kid's Hospital in Toronto, a nervous new foster parent trying to process the unfathomable: that the tiny person I'd already come to think of as 'my' child would probably not survive his first year; that if he did survive he would never walk, never talk, never feed himself. Brutal predictions from a well-meaning doctor and a social worker determined to offer a way out. You do not have to do this....