Andrew Solomon Far From The Tree

All my life growing up, I always had another child point their fingers at me and call me a dwarf. Or someone would ask me all the time, "What's wrong with you?". Exactly my concern. What is wrong with me? Why was I born this way? Why doesn't any medical professional, know why I have this Syndrome? In 1979 when I was born, I was diagnosed by Doctor Larsen, that I have what is called, Larsen Syndrome.…

A bunch of years ago, I volunteered to have our family interviewed by Andrew Solomon for his book project about raising a child of difference. When the book was released to critical acclaim we were invited to join Andrew on the Katie Couric Show. From the beginning, I said I did all of this in hopes that any family of a child with Kniest Syndrome (a rare form of dwarfism) might find our story and…

My 19 year old daughter has recently told me that she is Pansexual. That was a new one to me - so I have since researched it and am trying to understand it fully. I am fortunate that she has felt safe and comfortable enough to share this with me. She has not shared it with her father yet. She is not comfortable talking to him about her life. This puts me in an awkward spot. I have always told her…

It took me years to realize that the nature vs. nurture debate shouldn't concern me. Around age five, while being raised by my grandmother, I convinced myself that my father had died in a car accident. I had never met him, and saw my mother frequently (she was frequently ill, missing one eye, and suffered from severe memory loss). It seemed only natural that they had both been in a car accident—he…

I was deeply touched by "Far From The Tree". My children do not belong to any of the groups featured in the book, but a lot of what I read, I could relate to my own experience.

I am Polish, my husband is German and we live in the Netherlands. While we do speak Dutch and feel at home here, we do not have a Dutch identity the way our children do- that is their horizontal identity. At the…

Reading the book was a revelation. I read its entirety on my iPhone on the subway and more mornings than not, I was moved to tears. What touched me was that I was working as a social worker working with women with HIV+/AIDS, mental illness, substance abuse, etc... AND, being an orphan, I always idealized unconditional love of parents for their children. Never having experienced it, I was simultaneously…

I have been waiting my whole life for this book. My disability is more complex than I can explain. It involves medical components, emotional components, mental components, mobility components and more. It took me a long time for me to believe that I was even smart (with a 130-150 IQ I finally believe I am). It has been a lifetime struggle to define myself as more then just a disabled person, or a…

I wrote this poem several years ago when my family was struggling to accept our daughter's decision to marry a person of a different race -- a family taboo.


Family Treason

Whether by chance or plan
The fruit at times falls far
From the tree and sets its seed
In soil foreign to its stock

It may take root and bear fruit
Of…

Do you want us to provide bus transportation ?

Interestingly enough, this was a common and persistent question throughout the first three years of public education for Alex. In the matrix of autism treatment, there must be a class special education administrators take that emphasizes the need for autistic children to be transported by bus to improve their “socialization” skills. I…

This book helped me as the parent of a son with addiction. None of the chapters specifically address addiction, but the challenges we face are equivalent to those described. The book helped me get to a place of acceptance and appreciation for the joy and growth my son has brought to my life. It helped me put addiction into a proper context of parenting a challenging son who has defied all my expectations…

I met David in 1987--while he was wearing a dress. He'd come to a gathering at a friend's home, with three other transgendered folks, to talk about gender issues. At the time, he believed himself to be "just" a cross-dresser. And I was enthralled, struck by his honesty and vulnerability.

We were nearly 40 then, and he'd struggled with this proclivity for most of his life. Once, when he…

Andrew Solomon gets this as right as possible. I celebrate your message and the vehicle you have given all of us parents of exceptional kids. We love, as hard as we can, even when it would seem impossible to go on. As the word and the message find their way to the surface, so the needs of the child, my child, find their way to priority in my life.
My son is a giant. He lives with gigantism.…

I'm almost finished reading the book and have been totally engrossed. I have two daughters, 20 and 7. We are a blended family. My oldest does well academically but struggles socially. My youngest is social but has cognitive delays and receives OT, PT and speech. There is quite a bit of tension when my oldest returns home from school. She is constantly in competition with her sibling and at odds with…

I had to come out twice in my life. To my parents, at least. Both times were embarrasing, and both were very disappointing. The first time was when I was sixteen. At eleven I knew I was gay, and I had given myself a deadline: Either I told my parents before I was 18, or I told my parents before that.
When I was sixteen I fell in love with a guy. We dated a bit. It was not a great love, but it…

I'm the lesbian mother, with my wife, by donor insemination, of a transgender son and a dwarf son (plus a third son as well). We gave birth in 1981 and 1984, before our children had many options of horizontal identities among children of LGBT parents. (My book, the Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook, HarperCollins, came out in 1993). My professional life as a psychologist includes an expertise in…

My daughter is autistic. I admit it took a long time of coming to acceptance of this reality in our life. I have been asked many times if I could change anything and truthfully I wouldn't. This disability being present in our family has taught me so much about life. After spending countless hours studying autism, I do know I can face anything that comes our way. Yes, there were times when she was…

Watching Andrew Solomon's TED talk about love and acceptance, I felt compelled to tell mine and my mum's story.
In 2007, my mother decided she was finally ready to divorce my father after 25 years of marriage, 2 teenage children and a sense of her own lost identity. Admittedly, the last 10 or so years weren't easy, and my brother and I watched as our 'family unit' unravelled into a household…

I am like many middle age women, I have more in common with my fellow sojourners than differences. Unfortunately, or fortunately as I see today, it was and continues to be my 'differences' that draw attention to me and not in the way of highlighting my gifts and talents.
I have always been a very tall female for my age; alas my age has caught up to my height. Along with the gift of height came…

When I was five years old, my mother divorced my biological father because he officially came out of the closet; three years later my mother remarried and we became a blended family, two children (my brother and I) from the first marriage, and three more children from the second marriage.

At the time that my mother was divorced and a single parent within a conservative and judgmental…

I was one of those who was profoundly sexually abused, and when something happened in the news -- when I was 32 -- I cracked. I disclosed to the rest of my family that my father had been my perpetrator. I really wished that my father could say he never really meant to hurt me; I wished more that my other family members would stand up for me and rally to my side.

I have done much therapy,…

My Caucasian kids grew up in the central highlands of Vietnam and in Singapore, until we moved back to the US last year. Celebrating differences is so important, but is so hard when the horizontal culture of American youth is determined to stamp out differences rather than celebrate them.

After reading Far From the Tree I realized I wasn't alone. The treatment I had received from my nuclear and extended families made sense. Once my family knew that I was aware of being adopted the gloves came off. Frequently on holidays my larger cousins would hold me down while the others called me names and/or punched me. Comments like "Your mom likes me better than you because I'm blood" and "I…

It is not often that I find a book and realize as I read it that I have waited my whole life for such a book. That is my experience as I read “Far from the Tree.” I am the mother of 3 grown children and the concept of “vertical vs horizontal” identities is something I have never thought about. I grew up in New York City (Washington Heights) in the 50’s-60’s . I had an older brother who…

Matthew Shepard was murdered in October of 1998. This was done because he was gay. He died alone, tied to a fence on the Wyoming range. He was a thoughtful, kind person and he left us at 21. I wrote a mini-poem for him and am absolutely convinced that Matthew's memory endures:

Matthew Shepard wide the sky, long and blue before my eye, endless you are, yes you stand me up, never really…

I am writing in order to make a contribution to Andrew Solomon's project of enabling people with horizontal identities to share their stories. I grew up in the 1940s and 50s in a middle class family in the middle of the country, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a town epitomizing "middleness." My vaguely articulated discomfort with the confines of "middleness" was manifested in a yearning to go away to big…

I am writing at the invitation of Andrew Solomon to broaden awareness of a widespread network of rehabilitation communities for people with mental illness which aims at realigning identities. The communities are based on the premise that the illness is not all-consuming. It is not the whole of a person. The design of some 341 such communities in 32 nations is called the Clubhouse Model, and it was…

I was honored to meet Andrew, at a fundraiser that he and his partner John, hosted for my friend Spencer's film project related to Our Little Roses in Honduras. I felt so grateful to him and for his book and was blessed to be able to thank him face to face.

For about a year I was working on a memoir about my only sibling and our relationship. She has DS and we were born less than a year…

More important than my story, i wish to thank Mr Solomon for writing what I think is one of the mostly timely and significant books of this century. I think you should win the Pulitzer for it. You have succeeded in writing the most profound and compassionate yet unsentimental study of the problems of identity and illness I have had the privilege of reading. You eloquently illustrate and articulate…

I have entered many rooms in my 70-some years. Reading this book allowed me for the first time to enter a room in which I felt totally accepted. Thank you!

When I was a teenager, I came across a magazine article featuring a mom whose son had been born with a cleft lip and palate. In the article, the mom spoke of her son’s birth, and emphasized that it was not the joyous occasion she had expected it to be.

When I read this, I felt a strong emotional reaction well up within me. I found myself in tears, angry toward the mother in the article,…