My newest and favorite post for Psychology Today

This year has been incredible. I chose to focus on the positive and the many wonderful things that have happened to me.
I can’t help but reflect on the words people have said that were designed to hurt me. I don’t spew off my professional qualifications on NLD boards for many reasons. But I have two years of grad school, many post grad courses, work and a license in social work. This does tend to make me think in a certain way.

This is going to sound so elitist and maybe it is but I do understand more than a high school grad and don’t care who hates me for saying that. Few people including doctors know much or anything about NLD in adults. So I say “this is my opinion,” or “I believe.”

People say I talk down to them. But how do they talk to me? Apparently all people with NLD are forever children who need to be talked to as if we are slow seven year olds. I resent that.

I don’t consider my accomplishments amazing. It makes me sad to realize how much more I could have accomplished had I known about NLD prior to age 56. That’s a fact.

Think about that. I navigated through life without being called “disabled,” which I’m glad about but that also meant I got no service. None at all. I graduated from college and grad school–and did exceptionally well. I should be very proud of that. Instead I feel that I didn’t live up to the potential I know is in me.

I’m told I lack humility. I thought about this a lot and if lacking humility means I’m not Mother Teresa well I’m not. But I care about people a great deal and take much pleasure in helping them. I think I succeed more than I fail.

Am I self-centered? I sort of had to be as navigating the world wasn’t easy for me. I see people in the NLD community who are obsessive and self-centered about their children. That’s considered a good thing but making your own way isn’t?

That’s called advocating. People advocating for themselves are considered wonderful but people like me who were raised to question everything and might see another solution to a problem or another problem completely are considered to be troublemakers.

Unfortunately my parents are no longer on this earth. They would have have loved to advocate for me. They did but it was hard when you don’t know exactly what the problems are.

I want to begin the New Year feeling good about myself, and damn it I will because I’m more, much more than a series of negative comments and words.

I am obsessive. I don’t think that’s a horrible trait. I need to make up for time lost. Contributing to the world is very important to me.

Here it is

Around nine years ago I wrote a fast letter to the New York Times ironically supporting a psychologist I would end up blogging with at Psychology Today It was the first letter I had ever written and actually sent–by email which makes everything easier. I forgot about it until later that day when I was in my brother-in-law’s car. I assume we were going to dinner at some truly good Long Island restaurant. I missed the phone call but began screaming when I heard the voice mail.

OK I easily impress myself. An editor wanted to know if it was alright to print it. No, I wrote it to fill up bandwidth Several days later, very coincidentally, I was offered a reporting job, not for The Times.

Yesterday I was reading an article on NYTimes.com about Facebook and just had to comment. I knew it was too late to make “readers recommendations” and sent it off without editing or editing some more, In all five comments I have submitted in the past several years I only checked one and that made “readers recommendations.” For some reason I checked and it was an “editor’s pick.”

1177 Comments
NYT Pick
Dec. 13, 2011 at 4:54 p.m.

last week I was the object of derision on a Facebook group for people with an invisible disability. But without Facebook I would have never met so many people who share the same disability
For the first time in my over 50 years on this earth I’m learning to accept me for me thanks to Facebook
My family is closer than ever thanks to Facebook. I’m in touch with people from my entire life span. Seeing myself through their eyes was eye opening, humbling and wonderful.
A lot of people on Facebook are dedicated to being real. You just don’t have to tell what you had for lunch or who you had sex with when. Facebook is there for you to make your own experience with.

Damn I should have edited it. I should have edited it!
Yes I didn’t use my name nor did I link to a blog as many people do but….This means goods things are around the corner. The whole year has been great. Overwhelming but life affirming; filled with writing recognition and family old and new!!!

The sad but adorable irony wasn’t lost on me that I then went on Facebook and updated my status–even before calling my sister or best friend.

I will be back with a Chanukah post–The Miracle of the Ipad–an absolutely true story about how my Ipad might have saved my life. It’s more exciting than this post and never once mentions a newspaper. My sister called my Ipad story, “a sign from God.” She wasn’t sure about what!

Apologize even when not neccessary

I have about 36 newly found but not met nieces and nephews. I call the one I know, as she’s from the family I have known all my life, 37. After I spoke to bio half-bro I was so freaked out from learning about the size of the family and that he not only hunts but makes his own gun powder and uses a bow and arrow I ran into her room.

Fortunately 37 is very mature. She looks just like the Deschanel sisters, Zoey and Emily but for some unknown reason my brother-in-law doesn’t want to know what 37 will look like when she’s in her 30′s and pregnant.

For those of you who have read Courting since its inception year, 37, then a little kid, will be going to college next year. Being one of us she likes to make life hard for herself and refused to apply to one school early admission but is applying to schools all over the North East. Because of me she’s a legacy to one of them! Unfortunately it’s not NYU which I left after one year. Kind of wish I had stayed so it could have been grandfather, daughter, and niece at the same school.

I don’t generally write about her as I have this grossly outmoded belief in privacy. I can talk about me but nobody else in depth. I can talk about the dead but that’s funny–generally they have living significant others, siblings and/or parents who somehow figure into every story. That does limit personal blogging a lot.

Oh Thanksgiving dinner was great as were the other ten days. I went to a new store in Huntington that only sells many types of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I could taste them all but stopped after fig and vanilla balsamic as I was so overwhelmed!

My latest Psychology Today post

I wish my parents, those people who raised me, were here to tell me how much they approve of my finding new family. It would have been easier had they still been alive.

Yesterday I spoke to half-bio-bro for the first time. I’m a professional questioner yet I found myself almost speechless.

His grandfather (my bio one) was born on a ship to the US! He and his brothers became farmers. Their father, my bio-dad was also a farmer.

I have four half bio siblings–three younger than I am. They don’t know about me as I was born after my oldest half-bio-bro. Oldest half-bio-bro remembers my bio-mom. He believed my story to be true. I lost any doubt when I saw a picture of his son in his 20′s. He looked just like me. It was amazing!

I don’t really feel comfortable saying more than that right now. It’s a lot to take in.

What a year this has been! On New Years Eve when I ate every lucky food I could find mentioned on the Internet–salmon’s one, kale’s another, collard greens and spinach still more foods–so this wasn’t an unknown me–I had no idea that the next Friday I would randomly be looking at a picture of my bio-mom when an editor from Psychology Today called.

And in early summer I would hear from my birth cousins on bio-mom’s side. I know I will look back and think 2011 the most amazing of years even if most of the time it felt as if the US was drowning in its fluids.

First I have to catch my breath!

I just wrote a post that was so bad even copious editing couldn’t save it. There will be a new post later this week or next week. But Psychology Today comes first as people actually read that!

My sinus infection is impeding my productivity and making me hate mommy bloggers and mommy’s who love to test my knowledge of NLD on Facebook groups. As I don’t want to hate mommy’s and actually like them I think it best for me to stay away until the antibiotics kick in!

I need sun. I will be the first person (in many years) to die of “it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and her body was screaming ‘sun, sun, sun come out. I need you.”

And if you’re a mommy who likes to test me and then basically say “I was just playing,” I wish you well because you need all the good karma you can get.