Magical McDonalds

 For some reason I’ve recently seen several different articles (not even shared by dwarfism community friends) about different sporting leagues, usually children’s leagues, being lobbied to r emove the word “midget” as a classification. Inevitably, the comments of these news articles turn into a total (excuse my language) shitshow, and I see many MANY people complaining about the world today being too politically correct, calling people who are offended “snowflakes,” saying it isn’t meant in a mean way so people shouldn’t care, etc. I know I have expressed multiple times that midget is NOT an acceptable word, but I wanted to go more into why that is, so people understand where those in the dwarfism community are coming from. To most of the dwarfism community, the word “midget” is comparable to using the r-word to describe someone who is intellectually disabled. It’s beyond not cool. It’s hurtful and offensive and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. As a preface, I do not hold ...

This topic is something I have struggled with since Eli was a few months old, but I haven’t done it justice in writing because I’ve had a difficult time finding the right words to express myself to my satisfaction. So once again please excuse my terrible stream-of-consciousness writing. I wish I could edit myself, but I am who I am! I actually think there are two facets to this topic that are somewhat intertwined. First, why has it been such a struggle for me to accept and rejoice in Eli’s diagnosis? And second, what does his diagnosis even MEAN in terms of ability and severity. I’ve seen the book “Far From the Tree” by Andrew Solomon recommended by a few people over the past couple years, but I kept putting off buying an entire book when only one chapter (the chapter on dwarfism) would be relevant to me. I was able to borrow a free e-book from Open Library, and now I regret that I didn’t buy the book sooner, and I’ll probably purchase my own copy soon, just to have. I want to sta...