When your child is diagnosed with cancer, you just hope and pray they will survive.

Justin did survive. And I am beyond grateful.

But, after three years of chemotherapy, you are handed back a different child. A child with special needs. Emotional, physical, social.

These special needs may not last their entire lives. Or, they may.

And I am okay with that. I’m pretty much thrilled with that. But, it doesn’t make me feel anymore prepared.

As I’m sure any parent of a child with special needs will tell you, we don’t feel more equipped than anyone else. We are not any more qualified or composed.

We just don’t have a choice. And, if you have other children as well…then, there’s that.

So, we do the best we can.

And, sometimes, that may mean I look really together and on top of things.

Other times, it looks like me hiding in the laundry room up to my eyeballs in candy wrappers talking to the walls.

So, there it is.