A place to belong in Washington.

09/04/2026

I am the great granddaughter of two women who never knew each other, but who had something in common.

Both lived at a time when the government could make decisions that harmed their families, and neither had much power to stop it.

Their names were Nellie and Virginia.

Nellie was born in Ireland during the potato famine.

She did not come to America until 1902,.
But she was born into it.

She grew up in the Ireland it left behind. A country shaped by poverty, mass emigration, British rule, religious division, and a very strong sense of who you were and where you came from.

If you have seen Sinners, the way Remmick talks about being Irish reminded me of how my dad talked about it.

Not just “my ancestors came from Ireland.”

Irish.

It was an identity.

There was history behind it. There were things that had happened to your people that you remembered.

I mentioned this on my dad’s birthday, but he always fought for the underdog.

And I have heard my cousins describe their dad, my dad’s older brother, the exact same way.

After I watched Sinners, I started reading more about Irish immigrants and Irish identity, and a lot of it sounded familiar.

It sounded like my dad.

It sounded like my uncle.

It even sounded like the grandfather I never met but grew up hearing stories about.

And apparently dark humor, making jokes about serious things, comes up a lot when people talk about Irish humor too.

My dad and I both loved Coen brothers movies, so that tracks.

At this point, history is basically holding a damn mirror in front of my face.

Part of that history is this idea that you could throw almost everything at them and somehow they just kept going.

Famine.

Poverty.

British rule.

Religious division.

Leaving home and starting over somewhere else.

And still, the identity survived.

You keep going.

I don’t know if any of this has anything to do with why my family always seems to pick fights with the big guy.

Nellie eventually crossed an ocean and built a life here.

I grew up hearing that she hated it here and cried for Ireland every day until the day she died.

They originally settled in Eastern Washington, but eventually moved to Seattle.

She could not go back to Ireland.

But at least in Seattle, she could have the rain she loved.

Maybe that is why I like the rain too.

I just don’t like wet feet.

She left Ireland, but Ireland clearly never left her.

Virginia faced a different government and a very different kind of harm.

Her children were caught in the federal Indian boarding school system.

My grandfather was sent to Haskell with one of his sisters. Another sister was sent to Pipestone. His brother was sent to Carlisle.

And Haskell is still there today.

It is Haskell Indian Nations University now, and it is not the same institution it was when my grandfather was sent there.

But it began as an Indian boarding school during the assimilation era.

The place is still there.

My grandfather walked through those doors.

Those schools were not simply places Native children went to get an education.

They were part of a government policy intended to separate Native children from their families, languages and cultures and assimilate them into white American society.

You are a Native woman living at a time when the federal government has decided it has the right to take your children and change who they are.

And we should be really clear about what the goal was.

The philosophy behind places like Carlisle was literally, “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”

If they could not destroy Native people themselves, they would try to take the Native out of their children.

Their language.

Their hair.

Their clothes.

Their religion.

Their connection to their families and their tribes.

And while those children were in these schools, children were beaten. They were sexually abused. They were neglected. Some never came home.

Virginia had children in that system.

That is not ancient history.

The federal boarding school system investigated by our own government continued into 1969.

These were my grandfather and his siblings.

And Virginia was their mother.

Imagine knowing what could happen to your children and having almost no power to stop the government from taking them anyway.

Virginia died before my mom was born.

But I know her name.

If you know me, you know all of my children are named after someone.

My youngest daughter has Virginia as her middle name.

I gave it to her because I wanted a piece of Virginia to live on.

And when people ask why that is her middle name, I tell them.

I tell them about Virginia.

I tell them what happened to her children.

The government tried to erase Native identity from families like hers.

But they did not erase Virginia.

I know her name.

My children know her name.

And now her great great granddaughter carries her name.

I remember who they were and what they lived through.

Nellie and Virginia lived very different lives.

They came from different places, different cultures, and experienced very different kinds of government power.

I do not want to pretend their stories were the same, because they were not.

But both lived in worlds where governments and institutions had enormous power over ordinary families, and ordinary women had very little power to push back.

More than 100 years later, their great granddaughter is sitting here arguing with government agencies about her own child.

I can walk into rooms they would never have been allowed into and say I think the government is getting something wrong.

I can publicly disagree with people who have titles, power and entire agencies behind them.

And apparently I can be kind of annoying about it.

I can fight the government in ways Nellie and Virginia were never allowed to.

I have a voice they were denied.

“Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here
And you know it's right
And you know that it's right
We've got to get it together
We've got to get it together now
Lock up the streets and houses
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here
And you know it's right
And you know that it's right
We've got to get it together
We've got to get it together now
Hand on the weakened spirits
We've got to remain all alive
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the moment will arrive”

Something In The Air
Song by Thunderclap Newman

09/03/2026

Should a core disability service rise and fall with the economy?

In August 2008, I was doing hair and making great money. By September, my paycheck had been cut in half.

People stopped coloring their hair. They went longer between haircuts. Services that felt affordable one month suddenly became optional the next.

I was pulling weeds outside my dad’s office just to make extra money. I also realize how lucky I was that I could ask my dad my dad for help.

I had not suddenly become worse at my job.

The economy changed.

That experience has stayed with me because jobs do not exist separately from the economy.

When the economy slows down, businesses cut hours, stop hiring, or close. When employers are deciding which positions they can afford to keep, speed, productivity, and how much support a worker needs can matter even more.

The people most likely to feel that first are often the ones who need more accommodations or ongoing support.

That matters when Washington has built so much of its adult developmental disability service system around employment.

Employment can be a great option for many people. I am not arguing against it.

I am asking whether it makes sense for a core disability service to depend so heavily on something the state cannot control.

Even when the economy is strong, your ZIP code can determine whether employment services are actually available.

A person in Seattle and a person in rural Washington may have the same support needs and the same number of authorized hours, but they do not have access to the same employers, transportation, or providers.

People sometimes talk about driving to another community as though distance is always the problem.

I drive plenty. And if there is a hell, I am pretty sure it involves I-5 between Factoria and SeaTac. My kids have probably heard me call some perfectly lovely people awful names while driving through there.

But rural distance creates a different problem.

Imagine someone living in Coulee City whose closest appropriate job is in Ephrata.

To someone in a larger city, that may sound like a reasonable commute. But the person may not drive, and rural transportation does not work like an urban bus system where another bus comes along every few minutes.

A provider has to be willing to send a job coach that distance. Transportation has to match the person’s work schedule. The employer has to offer enough hours to make all that travel and staffing possible.

And all of this may be arranged for a job that only offers a few hours a week.

If the employer cuts those hours, the job coach leaves, or transportation falls through, the entire service can disappear.

That is why the current system does not work equally in rural communities. It depends on too many separate pieces that are already limited here.

That does not mean every small town needs its own day program. That would not make sense.

What rural Washington needs are regional centers or hubs serving several surrounding communities.

And yes, that may mean driving half an hour or longer.

People in rural communities already do that for work, school, medical appointments, groceries, and just about everything else.

Target and Costco are an hour away from me, and somehow I still manage to shop there several times a month. It does not occur to me to see that as some huge inconvenience because that is simply how my life works.

Urban and rural communities have different geography, transportation, employers, and provider networks.

In an urban area, access may mean several choices within a few miles and public transportation to reach them.

In a rural area, access may mean one dependable regional center serving several towns, with transportation built into the service.

The people who live in each area need to help build the system that works for their reality.

Grant County already has regional transportation services that could help bring people from smaller communities to a regional hub. We would not necessarily have to build an entirely new transportation system from scratch. We could build on structures that already exist.

And this brings us back to a problem I have talked about before: job coaches do not provide personal care.

Transportation may get someone to the job or regional hub, but unless personal care is built into the service, a parent or another caregiver may still have to stay nearby.

A regional hub could build on transportation Grant County already has while providing one dependable location, shared staffing, supervision, activities, and personal care. Employment providers could work from the hub, and if Washington expanded group employment, people could meet there before going to work together and return afterward.

It would not replace employment. It could make employment easier to access while also providing dependable support when work is unavailable, inconsistent, or not the right fit.

The goal should not be an identical system in every ZIP code.

The goal should be equally dependable access.

DDA cannot control the economy or guarantee that the right employer, job coach, transportation, and personal care support will exist in every community.

But it does control whether Washington builds its primary daytime service around all of those uncertainties.

That is not dependable access.

It is access based on luck.

People with developmental disabilities do not stop needing structure, supervision, support, and community because unemployment goes up or a business cuts hours.

Employment should remain an option.

But it should not have to carry the entire weight of a daytime service system.

A job market is not a service system.

09/02/2026

I know this boy named Knox, and from the time he could walk, he has been my buddy.

Whenever he saw me, his whole face would light up, much to the irritation of his aunts, who apparently thought they should be his favorites. Knox has always loved me just as much as I love him.

Even now, all these years later, Knox greets me with what is known as the autism third eye hug. He gently presses his forehead against mine, right between our eyebrows, and stays there for a moment. Knox does not need spoken words to tell me he is happy to see me. That little forehead-to-forehead hug says it all.

I remember his second birthday. Someone was trying to roughhouse with him, and Knox did not like it. He could not see his mom, but he could see me sitting nearby, big and pregnant.

That little guy climbed right into my lap pushing my pregnant belly out of his way and gave the person a very satisfied look because he knew exactly what was about to happen.

I told the guy to knock it off. And anytime he came near Knox I made sure he didn’t mess with Knox.

Knox stayed on my lap for the rest of the night, completely certain that I was not going to let anyone bother him.

Knox communicates without spoken words and uses an AAC device to help him express himself. But anyone who really knows Knox knows he has one hell of a sense of humor.

A few years ago, I walked into his grandma’s house through the patio door, just as I have done for decades. I asked where Knox was, and she told me he was somewhere around the house.

What I did not realize was that Knox had heard the entire conversation.

As I walked down the hallway, he jumped out and scared me. Then he laughed hysterically when I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Knox also likes to be my knight in shining armor.

One day, his sister was having a rough day. It happens to all of us. She was using a tone with me that Knox did not appreciate, and he took it personally.

For the rest of the day, whenever she came near me, Knox would hold on to me tightly, point for her to go in the other direction, and make sure she could not get too close.

She was only talking rudely to me, but as far as Knox was concerned, that was more than enough.

When Knox loves someone, he loves them so much . You will have a hard time finding a sweeter guy.

Knox also has support needs that most people do not see.

Sensory issues can make eating complicated for him, and even with his AAC, it can sometimes be difficult to make everything he thinks, feels, and wants understood.

At times, when Knox is overwhelmed or in distress, he needs significant support to stay safe. Those moments are not who Knox is. They are signs that something is wrong and that he needs patience, understanding, and people who know how he communicates.

Those difficult moments are not what I want you to remember most about him. But they are part of why his mom worries so much about what his life will look like when the school bus stops coming.

What I want you to know about Knox is that he loves music, a good drive, tight hugs, and jumping on the trampoline. He is incredible at math. Not just good at it. The kid is a genius.

When we go for a drive, we listen to “Blue Monday.” With his mom, he looks for farm animals. With me, we are all about the roundabouts. Does he occasionally tell me to stop singing while I belt out, “How does it feel to treat me like you do?” Yes. Apparently, being a math genius does not mean appreciating a private concert from your mom’s best friend.

He loves being around people who understand him, including the other students in his classroom.

Knox’s mom should not have to lie awake at night worrying that the parts of his disability for him that require the most support will leave him isolated at home after school ends.

He deserves music, laughter, friendship, structure, and people who understand him.

Knox deserves somewhere that understands his needs and does not require him to fit into a narrow box before he is allowed to belong.

09/01/2026

I feel like I’m living in Bizarro World.

Two Washington state agencies can completely contradict each other.

The Division of Vocational Rehabilitation can determine that employment is not a realistic outcome, while the Developmental Disabilities Administration basically responds, “Are we sure? Maybe we should try employment again.”

DVR, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, helps people with disabilities prepare for, find, and keep employment. For many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Washington, it is the first step in their employment journey.

When there is a question about whether someone can benefit because of the severity of their disability, DVR can use trial work experiences to determine whether employment is a realistic outcome.

Basically, DVR can say:

“We tried. We do not think vocational rehabilitation is going to help this person get a job.”

You would think the next question would be:

Okay, then what would help this person?

That would make sense.

Unfortunately, this is where Washington’s system starts to feel like real life Bizarro World.

A DVR decision like that does not automatically get someone past DDA’s employment requirement.

Before Community Inclusion becomes an option, DDA can still require nine months of supported employment.

Nine months.

Because apparently the answer to “employment is not a realistic outcome” is “maybe we should try more employment.”

There are some exceptions, including certain medical or behavioral conditions, when supported employment has not been provided within 90 days, and for people 62 and older.

But they do not seem easy to get.

I would like to know how many people request an exemption, how many receive one, and why the others are denied.

I have talked to parents whose adult children have very significant support needs who were still required to go through those nine months of job coaching.

And what are they trying to reach at the end of it?

Community Inclusion.

Community Inclusion is supposed to be person centered and help people connect with their communities through things they actually enjoy.

In practice, it sometimes seems person centered only until the person chooses something the system does not approve of.

Want to go to a restaurant?

That may not count because the activity is centered around food. Not the sole purpose of interacting with other people.

A lot of the decisions Miles and I make are centered around food because we like food.

When we drive to Seattle, we stop at The Palace in Ellensburg because they have a good French dip and we both enjoy it. It is not a complicated clinical goal.

Miles also likes walking around stores, looking at things, and choosing what he wants to buy.

He cannot use Community Inclusion to do that, but he shops with me all the time.

Unlike his four year old brother, Miles is actually a great shopping companion.

That is what person centered should mean.

It should be about the actual person, not what someone sitting in an office thinks a disabled person should find meaningful and forcing them to interact with people in some awkward and unnatural way.

When you go to a restaurant, the main goal may be getting your favorite meal. But along the way, you interact with the server, the cashier, and the other people around you. That is how most community connection actually happens. It grows naturally from living your life, not from turning every interaction into an assignment.

Whether he is at a store or a restaurant, Miles is in his community doing what any other adult does. That is inclusion.

And apparently disabled people can be included in the community, just not necessarily with one another.

Someone may want to use Community Inclusion for Special Olympics or People First, but activities involving other disabled people can be treated as not inclusive enough.

What other group could the state discourage from gathering with people who share their experiences without anyone noticing how discriminatory that sounds?

After DVR, trial work, another nine months of employment services, and all the rules about what counts as inclusion, people were receiving only about 9.6 hours of Community Inclusion a month, despite being authorized for about 15.3.

There is something almost impressive about offering a different path and still managing to lead everyone back to employment.

Washington mom advocating for meaningful adult day programs and better IDD services. Sharing research, raising awareness, and working with families, providers, and policymakers to ensure every person has a place to belong.

08/31/2026

I think people with the highest support needs are often left out because their lives challenge the order we have been taught a successful life is supposed to follow.

You grow up. You become independent. You get a job. You move out. You find someone to share your life with, or not. You build a life that society can understand.

A grown man like Miles may look odd to a world that does not know him. He still loves going on the swing and watching Curious George. His communication does not rely on verbal speech. He will always need other people in ways most adults are taught they should outgrow.

For years, I have watched people stare at Miles or try to make sense of him through the expectations they have for everyone else.

When he was five, I was pregnant with his sister, and we were at Target when he had a meltdown on the floor. I was struggling to help him up while people watched and walked around us.

Finally, one woman came over and asked whether I needed her to call an ambulance. She genuinely thought he was having a medical emergency.

I explained that he was having a hard time connecting the broken machine with the fact that there would be no slushie that day.

This year, we were at Target again. Miles does not pick up on social norms, so sometimes he cuts in front of people while walking without realizing it.

A group of teenagers started making fun of him.

Miles was not trying to be rude. He was not doing anything to them. He simply moved through the world differently than they expected, and they decided that made him something to laugh at.

Those moments stay with me. I do not expect every stranger to immediately know why Miles behaves the way he does, but I wish more people would pause before deciding that someone who acts differently deserves to be stared at and mocked.

Miles has ten siblings altogether, including step siblings. They do not treat him like the autistic brother they have to tiptoe around. They simply see him as their brother.

He makes them mad when he turns off their show so he can watch YouTube. They annoy him when they come into his room and get into his things.

He loves them, they love him, and they all get on one another’s nerves. Speaking from experience, that is simply what happens when you have a lot of siblings.

My nephew Zack is only two years younger than I am. All of my kids called him Zacky when they were little, but they grew out of it by the time they were about five.

Not Miles.

To Miles, he is still Zacky. And when Miles shows up at his house, he heads straight to where Zacky keeps the good snacks and helps himself.

That is their relationship. It may not look the way people expect a relationship between two grown men to look, but it is familiar, comfortable, and completely theirs.

And maybe part of the reason I have never questioned whether Miles belongs exactly as he is comes from the family that raised me. Long before Miles was born, I learned that needing other people did not make someone less a part of the family.

My grandma’s cousin Mary went into a skilled nursing home when I was in kindergarten, and she died when I was 22.

After Mass, we had to go visit her whether we liked it or not. And nothing screamed fun as a teenager quite like sitting through Mass, especially because my grandma did not believe in the Irish goodbye at church. We had to wait until the priest walked by carrying the Bible before we could leave. When I went to Mass without her, I peaced out right after Communion.

But if Grandma was there, we stayed until the end. And whenever we were in Seattle, we walked over to visit her cousin Mary, who lived in a skilled nursing home from the time I was in kindergarten until I was 23.

My grandma would walk in high heels from 54th to Mass at St. Benedict’s, and afterward we would walk several more blocks past Woodland Park Zoo to Mary’s nursing home. She kept doing that until she was 85.

Then she would go home after all that walking and make the kind of five course meal dreams are made of.

I did not dread visiting Mary because I did not care about her. It was hard because even as a child, I could see the difference between their lives.

My grandma was still walking across Seattle in high heels, going to church, visiting family, cooking enormous meals, and deciding how she wanted to spend her day. Mary was living in one room, surrounded by the pictures she had colored and the stuffed animals she had won at bingo, depending on other people for nearly everything.

It was sad to see. It made the difference between growing older and losing your independence impossible to ignore. And there was no avoiding the fact that this could one day be your life too.

Mary’s final years were not the golden years we are promised, filled with travel, freedom, and living on her own terms. Every one of her needs had to be met by another person. She drank apricot juice because water could cause her to aspirate.

Her life ended in the way I hope to avoid in my own final years.

That is uncomfortable to admit, but it is the truth.

A stroke or a head injury can completely change the abilities any of us have to live independently. And when we have a child, we are never promised a child who will speak, live alone, work, or follow the path we imagined for them.

I think that is part of why fully seeing and embracing people with high support needs can feel frightening. Their lives remind us that independence is never guaranteed. They force us to confront how quickly any one of us could become completely dependent on the care, patience, and humanity of other people.

But fearing that kind of dependence does not mean the person living it has less value.

Needing other people does not erase a person.

This is the family Miles comes from.

We did not have to learn to love Miles as some abstract lesson in accepting disability. He was born into a family where people are ours. And being ours means they are included, protected, irritated with, laughed with, and loved.

When society refuses to face the realities of profound disability, parents are punished for telling the truth. Ask for respite, and people act as though you are trying to escape someone you love. Say employment is not the right fit for your adult child, and they accuse you of giving up on them. Ask for supports built around who your child actually is, and suddenly you are the one standing in the way of their potential.

The years of caregiving, protecting, advocating, and loving disappear from the conversation.

But loving someone does not mean forcing them into a life that was never theirs to live. It means fighting for supports that recognize who they actually are, meet their real needs, and allow them to live a life that belongs to them.

Miles is not someone our family simply makes room for. He is one of the people who makes our family what it is. He is loved beyond words, and there is no version of our family that would feel complete without him.

People with high support needs do not need to fit the adult success story we created before we make room for them. We need a bigger understanding of what a human life can look like.

He is loved because he is ours, just like every other member of our family.

08/28/2026

Living in a small town your whole life can mean meeting someone when you are 14, starting to talk and hang out, and then simply never stopping. Decades later, I am still chatting the same three people’s ears off.

I met another one of my best friends when I was 21, and apparently she also decided there was no escape.

They are some of my fiercest defenders and protectors. Nobody holds a grudge against your ex boyfriends quite like your best friends do.

Then there is my family.

I spend an ungodly amount of time with my mom. I drag that woman everywhere with me, and she is simply my rock. We are so connected that when one of us gets an ache, the other one somehow develops the same ache an hour later.

I have also turned into her in more ways than I would like to admit. When I am correcting my children, I sometimes get a sudden flashback of my mom saying the exact same thing to me and realize the transformation is complete.

Then there is my Canadian stepmom, who has the unique ability to say something incredibly nice while also making me question every decision I have ever made in my life. She keeps me humble, but she also makes sure I know when I have made her proud.

I have three sisters and two stepsisters, and I am the youngest of all six of us. They have always been some of my biggest cheerleaders and my most honest critics, because they love me enough to be both. I talk to one of my sisters about a million times a day. We talk about our kids, true crime, this, that, and everything under the sun.

I also spend a lot of time with my mother in law. If I am out late, there is a good chance I am with her. When I hear people say they cannot stand their mothers in law, I always think, Well, I am pretty sure I talk to mine more than her own son does.

These are the people who put up with me refusing to share my food and talking endlessly about things they neither know or care about.

They have seen me at my best and been frustrated with me at my worst. They loved me during times when I did not even know how to love myself, and they have never made me doubt that I belonged with them.

I have daughters and nieces watching me, and when my days here are finished, I hope they remember that I was never perfect, but I kept trying. When the easiest thing to do was give up, I didn’t. I got back up, kept going, and did what I could to leave this world a little better for the people coming behind me.

I entered this fight because I wanted to make change, not meet new people. If I wanted to meet people, I would join a club, but I hate meetings.

Still, I did not expect some of the people I met along the way to come to mean so much to me.

The people who loved me before this fight gave me the courage to enter it. Some of the people I have met along the way have helped me keep going.

Not everyone is going to like me or want to be my friend, and I am okay with that, even though they probably should, because I am a good time.

I’m telling you all this so you understand who I am. I did not enter this fight to be liked. I entered it to make change.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

“I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
I've never been afraid of any deviation
An' I don't really care if you think I'm strange
I ain't gonna change
An' I'm never gonna care 'bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me
Pedal, boys!
An' I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
The world's in trouble, there's no communication
An' everyone can say what they wanna say
It never gets better, anyway
So why should I care about a bad reputation, anyway?
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me”

Bad Reputation
Song by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts