Confessions of a Rockin mom #20: Fear of reaching out

I mentioned in a previous post that we were quiet about Everett’s diagnosis on social media for about a year. To add to that, I’ll have to confess…I took a long social media break during those early days. It was just too hard. I was surrounded by friends who were having typically developing babies and doing typically developing things. At the time I felt like I couldn’t relate. And I also felt very alone. So I chose to focus on my new child and everything that came with his diagnosis, rather than social media. I also chose not to reach out to other local moms in the DS community because of our past experiences sharing the news of Everett’s diagnosis. What would these people say about my baby? Would they be supportive/happy people, or depressed/negative people about DS? Quite frankly, I needed positive/supportive at that time and couldn’t risk the latter.

Well, I’ll have to confess something else…I did myself a great disservice by not reaching out. I have yet to meet a person in our community who is depressed about Down syndrome. Quite the opposite. My fellow Rockin moms and Kinderfrogs parents are inspired and motivated by our children with DS, and we wear our memberships into this community like medals of honor! We all wear them differently, but we all wear them. I think the only member who twirls his medal, however, is Everett. He’s doing just that in this pic of us with some fellow Rockin moms and kiddos. I’ll be glad when both boys are done with this “twirling” phase lol ?.