No, I’m not planning on hopping on a plane and heading to Europe. Read on and you’ll understand the subject line of this post…

As a mom-to-be, I’m reflecting on my future and what being a parent can mean. The responsibilities, the adventures, the challenges.

Tomorrow I’m heading to Halifax and will be staying in Dartmouth for the National Conference on Tourette Syndrome Plus.

It’s been three years since I last attending an national conference with the TSFC. A lot of the great people at these conferences are like family to me. I’ve known them for years and we’ve gone through lots of ups and downs together. I have multiple “moms” that span from Toronto, Atlanta, and beyond.

My TS family

This other family is a unique support system that I feel very fortunate to have found. Everyone’s situation is different and no challenge is viewed as too small. And together we celebrate successes. Heck, when I was much younger, my mom had some major bragging rights one year when she managed find a type of sock that didn’t drive me nuts (sensory issues for the win!). You can laugh, but it’s just one of the fun adventures you can experience with there’s a spectrum disorder living in your home or family… and often more than one of you have something that makes you unique. It is typically hereditary after all!

I’ve talked about what it was like for me to be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome (TS) when I was six-years old.

There are so many things I haven’t written about yet here… but will someday. Just need to find the time!

One session at the conference that I’m really looking forward to attending is the Moms’ Session that’s happening tomorrow night. Typically on the first night of the conference, there will be meeting rooms for attendees: the moms, the dads, the youth/young adults, the kids, the adults. Each group meets for a couple of hours. The moms and dads find this to be a really great session because they can talk to other moms and dads separately. Moms bond over mom issues; dads bond over dad issues.

Historically, always been part of the sessions for youth/young adults or the adults. But this year, I’m going to the moms’ session. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve wanted to go to it for years and now it’s happening.

I’m finding it hard to find the right words to explain what’s going on in my head right now. I’m not hoping for our little one to have Tourettes, OCD, ADHD or anything else, but I’m not dreading the idea of that possible reality.

When I was born, I was a normal baby girl. You might even say I was a normie. My parents had no idea that I was about to introduce a whole new world to them in just a few years. But when that happened, they were amazing. They read what they could find and spoke with anyone who had knowledge on the topic of TS and its other related disorders. And they didn’t even have the Internet to inform or misinform them!

Nowadays, it’s very different. There’s too much information. I can’t even imagine how overwhelming it must be to a parent who has just found out their child has TS and they haven’t heard of it before (or what they have heard are the frustrating stereotypes I still face now and then).

The title of this blog post is brought on by a poem that I first read at one of the national conferences many years ago. I think it’s often shared at the moms’ session, but is typically in every conference binder.

Read the poem and then I’ll give you some of my thoughts on what is discusses…

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