Raising a child with Cerebral Palsy is challenging, exhausting, wonderful, exciting, beautiful, scary, ugly and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.

Challenge Accepted is a journey through parenting a child with cerebral palsy and his two older sisters. Parenting is tough but challenges always feel more manageable when you aren’t alone.
I hope you enjoy and find company in our journey.

Photo's by Masika May

End to the Van Saga

After finding out that the van we had ordered likely wasn’t coming quickly, if at all, we went on a hunt for yet another option. It was a Friday when I was told and that…

Emotions are Close to the Surface

As I was waiting on my delayed flight home from Toronto, I was feeling very excited to get home to see my kids. While boarding the plane, I recognized a gentleman from our community. We…

Travel

Travel is something that currently doesn’t really exist for William, but it does exist for the rest of us. We don’t travel a lot and I wouldn’t call our travel “vacation.” Our travel is limited…

Emotional Rollercoaster

Lately things have been a rollercoaster. I find myself inspired to write but I find myself second guessing the realities of the content. I look into my little boy’s eyes and my heart aches for…

Amazon Over My Boy

It would be very easy for me to focus on all the daily hurdles that exist in my world of parenting a boy with exceptionalities. There are so many triggering events every single day that…

Self Care

Over the years self care has evolved, changed, shifted and been non-existent. Self care has often felt selfish, exhausting, overwhelming but now…it feels sacred. No matter where I am at with self care, it is…

Friendships

I have had many dear friends through the different seasons of my life and I’m acutely aware that in my current season, it takes a warrior to stand by my side. Despite my recent decision…

Our Farm

In the early years on our farm we adopted some goats and a livestock guardian dog, Rosie, to protect them and our girls. This was a huge learning curve for us city slickers. Rosie is…

Hearing Aid Sunday

After months of appointments, fittings and trials, William’s hearing aids had arrived. We booked the final appointment to head down to Victoria to have them set just right for him. We didn’t get anything particularly…

Keeping Dreams Alive

While I was pregnant with William, Bear and I decided to move. After losing our daughter we both felt suffocated living in Victoria. We were both born and raised there, had an amazing friend group,…

Homeschool

It was never an option to send William to a regular public school. With the challenges that William faces every day, I honestly couldn’t imagine sending him to school. Likely, he would be at home…

Physiotherapy

When William was an infant, we started early intervention after being warned by professionals that children with Dystonic Cerebral Palsy can develop a variety of different issues that require surgical intervention. Our early intervention program…

William’s Care Team

About 7 years ago I started a battle that I was not going to back down on. William had been in the hospital countless times and one day I just said enough is enough. My…

Non-Verbal Communication

There will always be things I’d like to hear from William. But I have learned that if I listen with more than my ears, he will tell me everything I want – and need –…

Meet my Mimi Pie

My oldest, my friend, my sensitive soul and the human I want to be like when I grow up. Mimi Pie is her nickname and I’m not sure how she got it. Occasionally we call…

Uber Driver

We have five members in our family. Only two of those members are adults and everyone has somewhere to be. When both Bear and I are in the game, we have an unspoken system of…

Meet the Beast

My middle child who, I like to refer to as ‘fairy-fart’, ‘spider baby’ or ‘Beast’ is my ride or die. This kid is my animal loving, TV hogging, chore doing, laundry master. She is an…

Shrapnel

Often, I come across things encouraging people to live in the moment, suggesting people don’t dwell on yesterday and insisting we are wasting our energy worrying about the future. Depending on my mood and what…

~ Keely

Keely is an author and advocate for children living with disabilities. She lives on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia, with her husband, her son William who has cerebral palsy, her two daughters and several four-legged friends.