“Empowering People and Changing Lives”

http://www.empowerpeoplechangelives.com

I blog to educate people about disability advocacy and awareness as well as to provide resources to parents of children with special needs regarding music therapy, life in general, and becoming a college student with a disability. I also love to include videos and different tidbits of media found across the Internet to make my content come alive and prove its relevancy to my readers.

I had a LiveJournal from Summer 2004 – Winter of 2007, which can be found here, but when I started Empowering People and Changing Lives, I had been reading the blogs of many parents of special needs children along with those of special educators and other professionals in the field. I automatically decided that I needed a fresh start, and I had a much more profound statement to make in the blogosphere.

Some of my favorite blogs are written by parents of special needs children.

Life with My Special Ks tells the story of the Garcia family who have a daughter named Kennedy that was born with Down syndrome as well as a newly adopted daughter named Kellsey from Ukraine with Down syndrome. Renee’s poignant voice and her candid accounts make for a wonderful read anytime!

Pipecleaner Dreams tells the story of the Nickerson family. Mainly focusing on her daughter, Ashley, Deborah is open, honest, and intelligent when telling us of her experiences.

Lately, I’ve been reading blogs written by music therapists. They are wonderful resources for anyone who might come across them.

Listen and Learn Music is the blog of my therapist friend, Rachel Rambach. On her blog, Rachel chronicles day-to-day life as a music therapist at a school for children with special needs in Illinois, and she also records the songs that she writes to work on skills with her students to post on her blog. These can be wonderful resources for parents as well!

Another of my favorite blogs is called The Life That Chose Me, which is written by a special education teacher in Georgia who is also a parent to children with special needs. He chronicles everyday life in “a world of exceptionalities.”

I do respond quite often to my visitors in the comment section, but I’ve never been known to chat there. Maybe that’s an idea!

They do. In fact, one of my music therapy professors was reading the other day!

I usually blog when I have some downtime before bed, and I’m usually underneath the covers getting ready to head to dreamland.

Inspiration comes in all forms for me. Mainly, lately, it comes from people with disabilities achieving what was thought to be impossible for them. Visit this blog post for some instant inspirations!