Linda Atwell - Loving Lindsey: Raising a Daughter with Special Needs

Ms. Atwell writes with clarity and contemplation through the triumphs and tragedies of raising someone with special needs. At times funny and always candid, Loving Lindsey is a book every woman should enjoy reading, no matter where they fall on its relationship spectrum.

KATHLEEN CREMONESI, author of Love in the Elephant Tent: How Running Away with the Circus Brought me Home and 2016 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Awards for Coming of Age/Family Legacy

Told with astonishing honesty and candor, this is a story about the courage and bravery of daily life in a family bringing a forever child into adulthood. Its a story about real love in real life.

CORINNE TIPPETT, author of Just a Couple of Chickens and When No One Else Would Fly

Linda Atwell is a master storyteller, and does a phenomenal job of sharing the love and grievances that come with raising her daughter. The moments and years of joy and frustration every family feels are especially touching as she navigates life with her sweet, defiant girl. Loving Lindsey is an exquisitely told account of a mothers protection, pride, frustration, and is, ultimately, a story about never giving up. I highly recommend Loving Lindsey to every parent.

KRISTI RIEGER CAMPBELL, speaker, author, advocate, and Finding Ninee creator

Atwell shines a light on the complicated issues involved in loving and living with someone with special needs. Whether you are a family member of someone with intellectual disabilities or just looking in from the outside, you will be moved.

TERESA SULLIVAN, author of Mikey and Me: Life with My Exceptional Sister

The reader gets to see this family in a world we dont usually get to shareraising a teenage daughter compounded by the difficulties of developmental disability. Told with clear-eyed empathy for her daughter and the other members of her family, Atwells memoir is unflinchingly honest, allowing us to drop midstream into this remarkable familys life.

DIANA Y. PAUL, author of Things Unsaid

This harrowing journeya page-turner thats every parents nightmarewill stay with you long after you have put down the book. Highly recommended.

BARBARA DONSKY, award-winning author of Veronicas Grave: A Daughters Memoir (Canadian version: Missing Mother)

Linda Atwell is a beacon of light in her book about the richness of raising a daughter with special needs. Lindseys stories are woven into the midst of Atwells own very full life, and she truly tells it like it is. She shares her experiences through the lenses of love, humor, and the human condition.

DIANA DOLAN MATTICK, special education teacher and learning specialist

As the parent of a child with disabilities, I often wonder and worry about what the future holds for my son. Atwells tender, funny, real, and at times heart-wrenching memoir about her daughterwho as an adult woman still sleeps with a Cabbage Patch doll yet holds a job, gets a place of her own and falls in love, as doomed as it may beportrays the self-sufficiency and experiences that I want my son to someday enjoy. Loving Lindsey shows that it is entirely possible to have intellectual disability and also have a good life.

ELLEN SEIDMAN, author of the award-winning blog Love That Max

Atwells strong relationship with Lindsey, her special needs adult daughter, carries her (and us) through heartbreaking times that include fear, frustration, and disappointment that are always tempered by unwavering love and a determination to equip her daughter with skills for an independent life. A riveting narrative of mother-daughter struggles and rewards.

MATILDA BUTLER, memoir coach and award-winning author of Rosies Daughters: The First Woman To Generation Tells Its Story

Loving Lindsey is a moms heartbreakingly honest account of letting go of her daughter, Lindsey. The heroes of this book are Atwells fierce and imperfect love for her daughter and Lindseys determination to be as independent as possible. Loving Lindsey offers parents of children with special needs a glimpse of the challenges their children will face in adulthood and food for thought about how to prepare and navigate them.

JOLENE PHILO, author of A Different Dream for My Child and Does My Child Have PTSD?

Atwells evocative descriptions provide added depth to the characters, particularly Lindsey, whose voice emanates from the pages. A brutally honest, affecting memoir of family resilience.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Copyright 2017 by Linda Atwell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2017

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-280-2
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-281-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936433

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Cover design Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Cover photo James Annen
Interior design and typesetting by Katherine Lloyd/theDESKonline.com

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

Segments of , titled, Swing, Drive, Sex, first appeared in Perceptions Literary Magazine of the Arts in 2012.

A version of , titled A Window in my Heart, first appeared in Perceptions Literary Magazine of the Arts in 2016.

For John,
I am a better person because of you. Thanks for believing in me, especially during the moments I found it difficult to believe in myself.

And for all the strong women in my world, but particularly Betty, Nora, and Lindsey.

When my kids were growing up, I didnt know there was a manuscript in our future. I didnt walk around with a recorder, taping every conversation or logging every outfit worn. Ive recreated stories to the best of my memory. Although all incidents in this manuscript are real and did occur, some may have taken place in a different order. For various reasons, some names have been changed.

I t was 113 degrees on the last day of June 1999. My husband and I strolled the five blocks toward the Hard Rock Caf, holding hands sticky from the heat. We passed a Vegas nightclub. Billie Jean blasted into the street as a Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked on the concrete, enticing us to come in, have a drink, relax. I paused for a moment to watch.

Lets go. Im hungry, John said, pulling me through an intersection with a green light. Late the night before, under the sheets at the Rio, he and I had both admitted that the music, the flashing lights, even the shrieks on Las Vegas Boulevardeverything in this cityalthough exciting, temporary diversions from our small-town life, paled in comparison with raising our two kids. Especially our nineteen-year-old daughter, Lindsey.