Your daughter is anxious. Your son has dyslexia. Your oldest has behavior issues, the other is on the spectrum. Your kid has a chronic health issue. Your kid has trouble regulating emotions.

These are challenges, to be sure. Challenges for you. Challenges for them. It’s not easy…nor is it cheap. There are accommodations you’ll have to make. There will be things you need to buy. There will be things you—and they—will not get to do.

But as always, the Stoics remind us that everything has its compensation…if we choose to see it, if we choose to welcome it. You’ll have moments at the dialysis center that years from now, you wouldn’t trade for anything. You’ll develop patience and resilience that you could have otherwise never imagined—and they will too. You’ll learn how to advocate for yourself and for them. You’ll come face to face with this thing called acceptance. You will understand what it means to love, to really love unconditionally.

This thing with your kid—you wouldn’t have wished for it. You wouldn’t have wished it on them or indeed on any other parent. And yet, you are coming to see that it gave you something.

It gave you perspective—on what truly matters, on what real strength looks like.

It gave you connection—to your child, to yourself, to others who’ve gone down this road, too.

It gave you purpose—to fight for them, to guide them, to help them navigate a world that isn’t always built for them.

And most of all, it gave you love—not the easy, effortless kind, but the kind forged through trials, the kind that endures, the kind that, in the end, makes it all worth it.