The Long Road To Happy ? A Sister's Journey Through Her Brother's Disabilities

If parents of the intellectually disabled feel their family experiences are rarely acknowledged, the siblings in such a family often feel invisible--both inside their families and outside in the world. This book is the effort by one such sibling to be seen, to have the stories of those like her heard. The youngest of three daughters, Diane Morrow-Kondos tells a frank and candid story of an ordinary family in middle America turned upside down with the arrival of a son--not because their father finally has the boy he always wanted but because it is soon obvious that David has intellectual challenges the other siblings do not. To his death, her father will refuse to recognize his son's condition. To her death, her mother's mother will insist young David has no problem that couldn't be fixed by better parenting. It will not be until long after losing her mother, that the author finds the journals that reveal how her mother felt: completely and utterly alone, left to give her son what she could, all the while terrified about what would become of him after she was gone. With her mother's death, the care of David falls to the author. It is not a role she sought nor wanted. Indeed, she had always blamed her brother for the motherly love denied her and her sisters after his birth. There was no road map for the journey she and her brother were about to start. But maybe there should be. This is their story of the long journey to happy.

• | Author: Diane Morrow-Kondos
• | Publisher: The Roadrunner Press
• | Publication Date: Jan 01, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 272 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1950871185
• | ISBN-13: 9781950871186