Coming soon from VINE LEAVES PRESS November 2023

The Shape of Normal: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability and Embracing a Different Kind of Perfect opens with a scene in my twenty-eight-year-old daughter’s empty bedroom. Jessica, my grown-up child, graduated from Sesame Street to YouTube, collecting teen magazines, playing her music at ear-splitting volumes, and singing the lyrics to all the top-ten songs. I reminisce about the years spent struggling with unresolved feelings, my ableism, and my fear of how the world perceived Jessica. She is the hero of this story.

“My daughter was never broken. I was. And I was never on a hero’s journey to save her I was the one who needed saving.”