"Unexpected Journey" Book Giveaway!

Contest Ended.  Winners of a signed copy of Unexpected Journey: Ashley and Arlene!  

I've been so, so lucky to be able to meet people on Facebook through my Asperger Moms profile.  It's been completely amazing.  I just thought maybe I'd find a few people going through what I've experienced and I was just flooded with friend requests from people with Aspergers or has a loved one with Aspergers.  Through all this I was so happy to meet Cindi Ferrini.  She wrote a book called Unexpected Journey.  It's about her own personal journey.

The really AWESOME and cool thing is that she is **GIVING AWAY** not one but two signed books to my readers.  You can have three separate entries by doing these things and leaving separate comments about each of them.....

• Write anything in the comment section to Cindi that you would like.  An encouraging word, question about the book, something about your own experience. 

• Post about this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter (@amazinsix, please follow!) and leave me your link about giveaway.

• Become a follower of this blog! (If you are already a follower, that is still an extra entry)

Please leave me a way to reach you if I pick your name or you can email me at aspergermoms@yahoo.com .  :)


Will pick a name randomly on Friday, February 25 at 3pm. USA only please

Meet Cindi

Joe and Cindi were married in 1979, have raised three children, and speak nationally for Familylife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences. Joe is a semi-retired dentist - in practice for over 30 years; Cindi founded Creative Management Fundamentals - seminars on life and time management. They serve together as associate staff with Campus Crusade for Christ They have lived their "unexpected journey" in the Cleveland, OH area.

Interview taken from Start Your Family:

How did you handle the news that you were going to have a child with special needs? 

Our son was born after a very long and difficult labor. He looked perfect but had a large and misshaped head, which we attributed to the difficult labor; however, the shape and size never went back to what one might consider “normal.” We began to think Joey’s large head was what kept him from being able to hold his head up on his own. But that simple milestone took a very long time, and we were also noticing how far behind he was in all early developmental milestones. 

Each of us had different defining moments when we said, “Something isn’t right with Joey’s development.” For Joe, it was noticing “that look” in a person’s eyes that he often saw in dental patients who had special needs – but now he was seeing it in Joey’s eyes. For Cindi, it was seeing the children of friends who were much younger than Joey - far surpassing him in sitting up, crawling, etc. 

We both handled the news with denial at first. But as time went on, and he wasn’t improving, we struggled with anger and grief. It was such a feeling of hopelessness for both of us.

You can read more about her interview she had with Start Your Family  HERE and see articles, video, and interviews HERE.

Unexpected Journey – When Special Needs Change Our Course

Can order HERE

Some 54 million people (20.6%) in the USA have some level of disability (one with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities). With 26 million labeled as having a severe dis­ability, we saw a need to address the needs of those caring for anyone with special needs. Caregivers have ex­pressed the frustration that people in their lives (family, friends, coworkers) simply don’t “get” what they are dealing with.

Unexpected Journey – When Special Needs Change Our Course gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of those giving full-time care and attention to one with special needs; educates family and friends to the 24/7 journey that caregivers travel; offers full-time caregivers (those sacrificing their lives to care for others full time) hope and help for the long journey. Running the course of caring for a son with special needs and parents in their declining years, we’re here to say, “You can make it!”

Each chapter is patterned with several thought provoking scenarios, Our Story (sharing our story), Others’ Stories (thoughts and real life examples from others), and Your Story – for the readers’ thoughts to be recorded. Helpful check lists include: questions often unanswered (i.e.: Why did this happen?), how to ask for help, how others can offer help, warning signs of stress, and more. Readers have appreciated that it is written in small segments - since it’s likely the only way someone caring full time for another person will be able to read it.

*****Parts From Preface*****

Writing this book was not necessarily something we thought we’d do. After all, we’ve lived it once; we didn’t want to go through it all again. The first time was hard enough!

We saw a need for a book “out there” to address the needs of those caring for anyone with special needs. As we speak around the country and share parts of our story, people tell us they’ve been looking for help and hope in the midst of a situation that is never-ending and always demanding. People we meet express the frustration that other people in their lives (family, friends, coworkers) simply don’t “get” what they are dealing with. We’ve been there and certainly understand.

While on the phone with a long-time friend and in the midst of getting our special needs son ready for his shower, our friend said, “Oh, you have to help Joey shower?” This friend of over twenty-five years was surprised at our role and responsibilities. It wasn’t her fault. We seldom talked about it because most people (and I’m not saying this of our friend) don’t care. They see us do what we do and figure it’s really no big deal because we “make it look easy.” The truth is that it’s not easy; it takes every ounce of energy, patience, and endurance we are given. It’s demanding and grueling and often thankless. But our friend asked the right question to get us rolling on this book.

Sharing with others what we are going through is like visiting the Grand Canyon. We’ve been there, and we can tell others what we saw, the vastness of the expanse, the beauty of the colors in the rock formations, fabulous sunrises or sunsets, and the grandeur. But unless others experience it as we have, they will likely never quite get the view. A photo gives an idea of what the Grand Canyon looks like, but unless they’ve walked in our shoes, stood on the edge of the wide-open space, and taken in how “big” it is, they can’t experience it. Neither a picture nor conversation can capture the ten-mile width, 277-mile length or one-mile depth. Only experiencing the adventure will allow others to know what it’s really like. If they were to say to us, “So, what’s the big deal? It’s just a big hole in the ground!” that would be insulting. We’ve just experienced a place that is like no other, and to summarize it away in a simple statement does it no justice.

We all face daily challenges: Some people are challenged by algebra, some by finances, and others by relationship issues to name a few. But all caregivers face similar challenges. This book addresses the challenges they encounter every day (yes, every day) as they give up their dreams, their free time, and sometimes relationships and careers in order to care for another.

Having read reviews of other books written within the special needs community, we found that readers had difficulty finding a book that had “the answers.” It’s true that one book won’t give everyone all the answers. It’s also true that no book will give any one of us what we want—a cure so that the person we are caring for can live a healthy, happy life. No single book will work for each of us because every special needs person is different from the next, and every caregiver, family, school, medical facility, community, church, and circle of friends and support is as different as the one being cared for.

For that reason, we have chosen not to write a technical work but to touch the heart with hope, not to give medical or legal advice but to help shape the thinking process when it comes to various issues and to be informative, practical, helpful, and hopeful by reaching all readers right where they stand.

If you are looking for a cure or an answer to change everything at once (or at all), this book isn’t for you. If you need to be encouraged for today and to make it until tomorrow and maybe get a few ideas to help lighten your load for the long haul of the journey, then this will be just what you need. If you’ve been wishing you could share what you deal with on a day-to-day basis with others, then this is the book you’ll want them to read. We want to help you gain a healthy perspective that will allow you to go the distance when the distance cannot be marked or calculated. It’s not a sprint but a marathon with no end and no medal. We hope you’ll share it with others when you feel you can’t articulate what you are going through. We know we couldn’t verbalize some things to family or friends, but we have said them here, so others will, we hope, understand the frustrations as well as the joys of caring for people with special needs.

We’ve come to realize that normal or typical simply does not exist for us. Our specific journey has taken on many facets of color and design in order for us to experience all there is to this life. Normal is only a matter of perspective, and when caring for someone with special needs, our normal looks different from other people’s normal. Once we get into our normal, well, it becomes normal to us! May we all be patient until we find what normal looks like in our individual lives.