Neurodivergent family support · Parent of an autistic child · Virtual therapy Canada
A therapist. A mom. Someone who has sat in the same waiting rooms as you.
You don't know unless you know. I'm a mom of a child with autism and epilepsy. I know.
Maybe you have spent years fighting for your child in rooms that were never designed for families like yours. Maybe you have become fluent in a language you never asked to learn — IEPs, assessments, waitlists, specialist appointments. Maybe you have felt like you have had to constantly focus on the hardest parts of your child's diagnosis just to prove your need for support. Maybe you have held it together in meeting after meeting and come home and quietly fallen apart.
I know that experience. Not just professionally. Personally.
Parenting a child with autism and epilepsy has been one of the most profound and humbling chapters of my life. I have sat in the waiting rooms, navigated the school meetings, held grief that doesn't seem to go away, and felt a love that is bigger than any of it. I understand the weight of advocating for someone you love while still trying to hold yourself together. I understand how easy it is to lose yourself in the caregiving role — and how rarely anyone thinks to ask how you are doing.
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I also carried this experience into my professional life. Before becoming a therapist, I worked as a case worker at St. Amant, (Manitoba's Case managers for families of children with disabilities) — and what I witnessed there shaped me just as deeply as my personal experience. Time and again, I watched families arrive already exhausted, having to demonstrate and prove deficit after deficit just to access the support they needed. The entire reason I left was because a model that required families to focus only on what was wrong was at odds with everything I believed about how families deserve to be supported.
Parents and caregivers deserve a space that is entirely their own. One where they do not feel like they need to constantly focus on what is broken. A space where the love, the exhaustion, and the joy can all exist at once — without needing to be explained.
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That experience lives in this work. It is why I am so committed to supporting neurodivergent families — and why I believe that the parent in the room deserves as much care as the child they are advocating for. You have been advocating for someone else for a long time. This space is for you.
That journey also opened my eyes to how little support exists for neurodivergent individuals inside workplaces and organizations. It is part of why I now consult with employers on building neurodiversity inclusive workplaces, and work with neurodivergent individuals and families to help them navigate and advocate for themselves in professional settings.