Andrew Solomon Far From The Tree

My daughter is 19 years old and has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. It is considered one the most difficult mental illnesses to suffer with and to deal with for the sufferer and their family and the provider. My other daughter is 15 and is openly gay with ADHD and severe anxiety. My older daughter has a very high IQ and due to bpd being highly disregarded with a very low success…

I was born a "typical" child but have known cognitive disability since birth. My older brother has autism, but was diagnosed later in life. He is now 61 years old and despite doctor recommendations early on, always remained at home, but no school existed for him until he turned 8 and the school was a 2 hour bus ride away, a bus that he had been riding, to my mother's dismay, had broken brakes - and…

Our book club selected this book for discussion. A few days ago one of our members circulated this video clip featuring Jen Bricker, a lovely and accomplished young gymnast who was born with no legs.
The video speaks for itself. I thought it was a wonderful illustration of the themes of the book.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByFUzo9KwryWWkRwUEw4bmZNaVk/view?pli=1&sle=true

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 son was diagnosed with Autism at the age of 1yr, 10mos. I was in denial from that day. We sought more opinions and though I am lucky to live right outside of Boston, the mecca of medicine, having access to the best, most cutting-edge of treatment, I still had a very difficult time accepting that my son wasn't "normal". To me, he had up to that point seemed normal because he was and is my only child,…

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…

My son was born 25 years ago with Transposition of the Greater Arteries. He was taken by Mercy flight to Boston Children's Hospital; I discharged myself from Buffalo Children's so that my husband & I could fly on a commercial airline to meet him. I can tell you that I relate to every aspect of your Ted Talk and have been reading your book, realizing that "only the names change" the stories remain…

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 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…

I am a french young woman of 27 years old. My mother died when I was 20 of a cancer, which she had during 9 months. The particularity of my mother is that she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. It's just a word because each schizophrenic is different. The reality is that she was in great suffering. Since I was 8 years old, I knew my mother as someone who, sometimes, often, wanted to kill herself, as…

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…

Moy Moy is so much a part of our lives we sometimes forget that’s not true for everyone else. So here’s the story of Moy Moy, the reason for and the inspiration of much of the work of the Latika Roy Foundation (www.latikaroy.org).

Moy Moy is from a remote village in the Himalayas. Her mother had been sterilized after her 12th baby – but Moy Moy was conceived anyway. Determined to…

Judi Parker-from Grand Junction Sentinel can read about her amazing life. We were friends for 50 years and I can still see her mischievous smile as we walked/rolled (Judi was in a wheelchair her entire life) through the outdoor art of the main Grand Junction. She was rejected by her parents when she was born due to her deformities, had taught for 30 years, lived and drove on her own although she probably…

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…

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…

Dear Andrew,
I just heard a re broadcast of you speaking on NPR radio. I was so touched and brought to tears. My story fits in, and oh, I have reserved your book with the library. My Nora is adopted and after raising another daughter, I was so angry at myself for not discovering Nora's deafness till she was 9 months. Not knowing anything about the deaf world, I/we was in a state of shock. I…

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…

My daughter, an American with Irish/ Scottish ancestry, married a man from Trinidad, with African/ indigenous west Indian ancestry, so their two children, a boy and a girl, are bi-racial and bi-cultural. As their grandmother I want them to be able to fully develop themselves and express their uniqueness without the limits of other people's prejudices. They look like neither race but are their own…

My son's 17th birthday is on 19th June - next week. He hanged himself two years ago on 31 March 2011. He was 14 years old. This is an extract from a book I have written about him, us and what happened that day. It's simply called BOY...What brought Boy to a place where death was preferable to life? What path did he walk from birth to his still-so-young fourteen years? Was it something I did or didn’t…

About four years ago, I was on a news assignment filming at an elementary school where they celebrate their annual pioneer day. I was about to begin filming four women teaching quilting when the teacher stood and introduced all but one of the women. Immediately one of the women from the group stood and said the words that I could not get out of my mind, "And This is my sister, Mary; she is also a…

My daughter was 9 years old when my mother had come for a visit and noticed that one leg was shorter than the other. I felt guilty that I hadn't seen it myself. I love my daughter, so how could I miss something like that? That's the question I had asked myself over and over. I thought, that sometimes when you go for a walk small children will complain that they are tired of walking. Little did I know,…

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…

My daughter spent the first month of her life suffering from brain seizures. They went away, but she has always been different. Now eight years old, she doesn't pay attention well, has trouble understanding other kids' social cues and is often unresponsive to me, her teachers, other kids, etc.

She's also creative, beautiful, energetic, and wise. When she's not tuning out the world and…

“Your Son Has….

… Autism.” That was the message on the voice mail. Now for most parents that might deliver a terrible shock, but somehow -- at least for me -- this was more of a clarification about what might have been missing from my family tree. Not really so much about my son, but more so about my family when I was growing up. Finally, there was a term that made sense for why…

My daughters are adopted from foster care, now in their 20's: one daughter is mixed bipolar, learning disabled, recently denied social security and is living in a room in a house with her boyfriend; and the other has mixed psych dxs (also hypochrondria, compulsive lying), severely learning disabled and hearing impaired, still on social security and living in an adult living facility with others not…

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…

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 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…

This Child
We had pizza on Long Ridge road in North Stamford, Connecticut after our daughter was conceived on January 2nd 1994. We lived in New York City and I was 37 and this was our first child. I was more afraid of losing the pregnancy than of having a child with Down syndrome so I declined the amniocentesis because I knew that this might be our only baby and there was a risk of miscarriage…

I have a 13 year old niece that is on the high functioning end of the spectrum. She also has a seizure disorder, and will speak but very little. After reading "Far from the Tree" there was someone with autism that told Andrew that they wish that everyone knew that people with autism know more than what we think they know. I remembered that my niece liked to look up favorite cartoons online so I know…

It was never in my genes to parent this way. Instead it's a learning curve that we are all going through in our family. Instead it's a grieving process and then a healing, accepting process that will be life-long. Such is our journey as the family of a child with intellectual disability, Tourette Syndrome and ADHD. The early years of intervention, therapy and special education didn't teach any of…

My name is Theresa McMillan, and I was born with a rare congenital birth defect called Moebius Syndrome. It affects the 6th and 7th facial nerves which causes paralysis of the muscles. I am not able to smile or have any facial expressions. I also have vision and hearing difficulties and hand and feet deformities and a slight learning disability.
When I was born the doctor and nurses were all…

My son, John, is 31 years old and has been diagnosed with multiple leaning disabilities, RSD, Epilepsy and Schizophrenia. I believe he has been living with many of these conditions since he was 5 months old. In spite of his challenges he is living independently, speaks at local mental health conferences and has received training as a Peer Specialist with the goal of working in a field where he has…

Our son came to us through the Foster Care system when he was 4. We adopted him, and his 2 siblings, 2 years later. We know that he suffered emotional, physical and, now we know, sexual abuse. He struggles in social situations, had previously had violent outbursts, and has finally been able to show empathy. This past year he broke our trust that we had been building, and he broke our hearts. We now…

I gave birth to Taylor when I was twenty years old. I was a sophomore in college when my parents retired to Florida. In an attempt to create a good life for us, I left Chicago at the age of 23 to teach in NYC. Over the past seven years, I obtained three academic degrees and traveled to three different cities. As the parent of an autistic child I experienced some of the best and worst challenges on…

I love this book! It so eloquently records the feelings and insights that I’ve had while parenting Felix, my nine-year-old son, who has autism and cerebral palsy. Felix can rage like the devil, love like the most benevolent of spirits, and explore his world with spine tingling creativity and determination. Knowing him has deepened my understanding of art, science, nonverbal communications, muscles,…

My story begins with my birth, I suppose most of our stories really begin there. My father was from the mountains of NC and he moved after serving in the Air Force for 4 years to S.C. (Greenville area/ eg...the "upstate of South Carolina") and he met my Mother in 1959 after his service to our country. He "courted my Mom" the old fashioned way, in July 1960 - they were married. I came along on January…

My husband and I are the proud parents of two sons and a daughter. Our two sons are 23 and 21, respectively. Our daughter is 17 going on 30 and has been our daughter for close to three years. We didn't adopt her—she is our beloved daughter who was born a natal son.

DJ came out to her brother, who informed my sisters, a lesbian and a child specialist, both left leaning, and the four…

I have always believed that the most important relationship we have is with our parents - they validate us, they make us feel safe, and give us the extraordinary gift of believing in us and that we can "do". I am the mother of 3 grown sons, one of whom is gay, and I have always strived to make them feel wanted and loved and that they belong. Relationships are complex and can be difficult, but it's…

I am a transgender man in my twenties, happy and studying law. My parents were supportive, loving, and kind as I transitioned. Your book helped me to see the heroism in what they have shrugged off as merely good parenting. Also, thank you for your family's story in Chapter XII. Seeing another way of making a family makes it easier to envision one of my own.