I love my work!

That is the first thing you should know about me.

I’ve always been a believer in doing what is fair and right to the best of my ability. And I believe that there is interconnectedness in life that brings us to a time and place where we thrive by being who we are meant to be and by giving something back to our world. Each is gratifying and exemplifies Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam-the repair of the world.

I live life in an imperfect way and I am blessed to do so because I’m also able to respect and honor other people for just living their own lives. When we strive for perfection we focus so much on getting it “right” that we don’t get it at all. The phrase “he or she gets it” is dominant in disability circles. You either wholly value people who have disabilities or you are learning to remove biases toward the “other” in order to see the Image of God, B’tzelem Eholim, in each person you meet.

In 1985 I became the mother of a son we named Jacob. Like his biblical counterpart, Jacob had his struggles. A smiling and happy boy with blue eyes and blond hair there was something different about Jacob that we couldn’t put our fingers on. He had an inherently difficult time handling transitions such as being dropped off at his day care center, crying for the first half hour every day. This went on for months. He often played alone, lining up his little toy cars in rows by color or size or both.

In my blog I will share stories from this journey which hit a milestone the day that Jake, at 15, was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. With Jake’s permission, of course!

I cannot tell the story without all of the anecdotes and those will appear in my blog and in a book I eventually will write about our family journey. But I will tell you that I feel gratitude to the professionals with whom I had the worst relationships because they helped me see that getting angry and playing the power card was not going to help Jacob. I changed. And that change began my personal journey to where I am today. You can read the short bio below to learn more about my professional accomplishments of which I am very proud. But I am most proud of the three young men who are our sons, Aaron , Jacob and Zachary for guiding me to see the neshama (the soul) of every person and to value the knowledge that everyone has something dear to them, that everyone has hopes and dreams and that my job is to help them realize those dreams.

My constant companion on this sometimes lonely and unique journey is my husband Rick. He is an interpreter of “Aspie,” explaining the roots of the way that Jake sees the world. Like many parents after a child’s diagnosis, Rick saw himself in the DSM and now we know that he has some of the phenotypical behaviors associated with Asperger syndrome.

Download detailed professional Bio