I was inspired to create this site (and to write, in general) because of our daughter, Abigail. Here’s her story (mostly as I wrote it a decade ago on my original published site):
No one really ever knows what to expect when they become a parent. Abigail certainly took all of our expectations about parenting and threw them out the window. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist and overachiever, I had some pretty grandiose ideas about how brilliant my offspring would be. You know, simple things like mastering the alphabet before her first birthday and learning to read before she turned two. No big deal! 😉
When Abigail turned two, she wasn’t talking. She wasn’t shy. Like her daddy, the kid has never met a stranger. She just couldn’t talk. She tried, but everything just came out sounding like “ah” and “uh.” She had no words. Not even “momma” and “daddy.” We started testing her around 18 months to rule out the gamut of what could be causing her speech delay. By her second birthday, we still didn’t have any answers.
A few months before her third birthday, we finally started getting some answers. We were dealing with some compounding issues. The first was hearing loss caused by a blockage in her ears, resulting in her being hearing impaired. This was fixable. (Partially–she still has some hearing loss at the age of 11. It comes and goes. We’re still looking for more permanent solutions to help her hear better.) When she was a toddler, we worked on learning as much sign language as possible. The summer before her third birthday, sign language gave her the ability to start communicating with us for the first time.
The next answer was Apraxia–a neurological disorder that affects (mainly) speech processes in children. It’s a diagnosis that you get when they rule out almost everything else. The causes are not fully understood, and the success of treatment varies greatly. All this meant she might be able to learn to talk in a year, or she might never fully develop correct speech. So we started our journey of speech therapy and lots of work at home. We worked and worked and worked! It took MONTHS of work to get a good, solid “B” sound. We worked on EACH AND EVERY LETTER! It was meticulous. It was grueling. But it was productive. (I now have an extremely talkative almost teenager with only a slight speech impairment.)
Through the years, we’ve learned of other challenges that make it difficult for Abigail to speak the way other kids do, including structural issues and neurodiverse functioning.
Each and every letter made a difference for her. Each letter was one step in her journey. This idea is my inspiration for writing and my motivation for editing. Each letter, every word, is significant. They each build the story you and I want to tell. Each and every letter makes a difference.
Each and Every Letter 