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After graduating with my bachelor's in Human Development, I spent the early part of my professional life as a singer-songwriter and creative writer, still trying to figure out who I was in this adulting world I wasn't sure I liked very much.

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After my son was born, and out of a desire to capture his life in photos, I became a professional photographer and eventually a professional digital painter. No matter the form of art I chose to dedicate my life to, light and shadow created the depth that made it beautiful. My son was diagnosed with special needs and autism, and as I learned early on, this was not your typical parenting situation. As he and I learned to navigate this new world together, I noticed a lack of materials for children on the spectrum, so I wrote a book. Bad Sheep was born out of my desire to help other children name their emotions.

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However, when I was around other parents of special needs children, we all put on a "keeping it together" face. Talking about our struggles was only phrases in passing that didn't come close to covering the weight of real life. "I'm good." Or, "It's been a hard day, but we'll make it through." On rare occasions, I'd find a peer crying in the car after school drop-off. We needed each other, but we were afraid that what we thought and felt was somehow different from everyone else's, or wrong. That, shared and mostly unspoken, is what led me to create a podcast with a friend about parenting special children, in a way that didn't degrade the child but uplifted the parent.

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