Welcome here
Welcome email
Dear fellow parent,
You may have arrived here carrying questions, exhaustion, love so big it aches, and perhaps a quiet, persistent hum of not-enoughness. I know that I sit with grief and self-blame as well, is this familiar?
You are not alone.
This space—Lead Together—grew from that hum. From the conversations I’ve had over decades as an occupational therapist and a mother. Conversations with families living with developmental difference and trying to break into systems that keep whispering or screaming: conform, fix, improve, catch up.
I’ve watched how services, with the best of intentions, too often begin by focusing on what isn’t working. What’s broken. What needs to be corrected. I’ve watched how that gaze can quietly erode the confidence of parents, family members and caregivers—the ones who know their child best, but who begin to doubt their own knowing. How did I miss it? Why can’t I help my child?
And I’ve watched how children, too, can begin to shrink under that gaze. How children often hold all the responsibility of needing to be the one that is fixed? How they do all of the work because they are being bent and twisted to complete prescribed tasks by professionals and encouraged by their parents because their parents don’t know any other way.
But I’ve also seen something else.
I’ve seen what happens when we pause that deficit story.
When I start, instead, by asking:
“What do you love about your child?”
“What brings them joy?”
“What does your life need more of—not less?”
Something shifts. There can be initial confusion because parents tend not to be asked these questions. As the conversation moves along, the nervous system softens and eyes brighten. Parents sit taller. Children then bloom in small, fierce ways. And the idea of fitting in begins to lose its grip.
That’s the vision I’m holding with Lead Together.
A space where:
You are trusted as the expert on your child.
Developmental difference is not framed as deficit, but as a different rhythm filled with different possibilities and opportunities.
You are not expected to conform, but to reconnect with your own way of being and parenting.
This is not a space for quick fixes. It’s not a space for perfection or progress charts.
It’s a space for co-sensing, for slowing down, for breathing into your own vision.
It’s for remembering that support can be gentle and collaborative.
So as I start Lead Together and see where it takes me and us, I want to thank you for being here.
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And
Before you close this email, take one breath for yourself.
And one for your child—not the child you’re “working on,” but the one who already is.