Articles
Writing on intellectual and developmental disability, transition planning, and the knowledge parents hold about their children that nothing else preserves. Grouped by the territories the publication covers.
The Other Half of Caregiving
Caregiving splits into two halves — the physical labor the field has built infrastructure for, and the continuous, present-tense knowledge of who this person is that no instrument has ever held. These pieces are about the second half.
Essays in development.
The Convenient Myths
Three myths the industry and the broader culture propagate — each of which harms parents while appearing to honor them. These pieces name the cost.
September 3, 2026
Parents of loved ones with lifelong support needs often carry a private, unspoken belief: that they are not allowed to die first. This essay traces where that belief comes from, and why no field has ever named it.
June 15, 2026
The Letter of Intent is the most universally recommended IDD planning tool and the least validated. 84% of parents never finish one. No study has shown it improves outcomes. The knowledge parents carry deserves a better format.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field has been planning for the wrong event — preparing families for the parent's absence when what was needed was the reduction of the parent's irreplaceability while she was still present. The first work is contingency. The second is the plan.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field borrowed "succession" from trusts and estates law and built its long-term planning around a word that named the wrong moment. What families actually live is a transition — a multi-year transfer of judgment, knowledge, and relationship that cannot happen at a moment.
The Silo Problem
Silos are permanent structural features of the IDD service ecosystem, not defects waiting to be repaired. These pieces examine what actually holds instead of what the field keeps trying to fix.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field organized its services into silos and spent decades trying to connect them. The connection was never the problem — no silo held the whole person. Only the parent did. What was missing was not interoperability but a human continuity operating system.
Dual-Dream Advocacy
Parents are asked to hold two futures at once — their loved one's and their own — and told, implicitly, to plan as if only one is real. These pieces examine what it looks like to advocate for both.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field built its planning instruments around a single unspoken assumption — that the parent would always be there. This essay names what the field never did: the parent was not the planner; the parent was the plan.