Parenthood, under any circumstances, is a lifelong commitment that redefines one’s identity, redetermines priorities, and changes a person in innumerable ways. Take all of that and add caretaking for a child with a disability, and most people would say that they couldn’t imagine the responsibility of it all. This book collects and broadcasts the voices of women sharing their stories of exhaustion, fear, protection, triumph, and love in raising children who, either since birth or at some point later, have required more than what most people imagine as the standard of parental care.

Each story highlights the need for patience, grace, acceptance, and, most of all, community so that neither the author nor the reader feels alone in their journey as a mother or father of a child regardless of their needs or capabilities. This volume includes five main sections that focus individually on a different part of the journey or support network facing a mother of a child who is medically complex.

The stories in each section vary significantly, as everyone’s journey is unique, but so are the diagnoses of the children that are featured. Every contributing writer brings their own style, offering vulnerable confessions, uplifting verses, or more conversational approaches that strengthen each submission’s voice. Podcasters, lecturers, community figures, and everyday moms make up the roster of authors featured in this book, creating a vast roadmap of resources that a reader can research and pursue well beyond the back page. Whether one is a caretaker of someone in a similar circumstance or a person just wanting to help give these amazing women an opportunity to be heard, the reader has a golden opportunity to learn just how much it takes to raise a child who needs additional support.

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