Back from BlogHer

BlogHer has been over for 5 days and it feels like yesterday we were at the Special Needs Mini-Con. It went really well and the special needs community is online talking about how we can embellish, lengthen and flesh out another Mini-Con. We’re thrilled to be a part of bringing it to the community and we’re proud that BlogHer and the special needs community responded so well to it…we will work towards expansion with BlogHer!

Please join us in a BlogHop for BlogHer by writing something specifically about the Mini-Con and we’ll list it on the site and push the link to people! Enter your URL and information here.

BlogHer Survey Results

Wednesday I posted the results of the survey we gave in the room at the beginning of our session. I just wanted to show our commonalities with each other. Too often I think we divided ourselves up into groups of diagnosis for good. One of the reasons we started Support for Special Needs was to offer a place where you can find support across diagnosis, but still stay connected to people who share the same struggles.

Out of discussions over the last few days, we’ve started the hashtag #moreincommon (part of our site’s statement on the about page). We hope as you tweet about special needs – in the context of what is common for us – you’ll use that hashtag. The best we can hope for is that our community will be able to focus on our commonalities and not let things divide us. Like I said; it’s both possible to be in this group and have your own platform; mine is kidney disease and organ donation. What’s  yours? Share it here…

Please meet some members of our site!

Kate Canterbury (aka Guavalicious) – Meet Kate. Or @Guavalicious if you’re on Twitter. Welcome Kate as our newest regular contributor. We’re thrilled she is heading up a series of monthly posts (beginning with a kickoff of a week’s worth) called “Yes, I am a Special Needs Parent” – which will explore what we parents go through as we claim (or not as the case may be) our special needs parent status. Processing diagnosis, what we do through the various stages of acceptance, and what that means for us, our kids, and our place in our community. If you’d like to contribute to this series, please contact Kate through messaging on her page.

Amanda (aka Micropreemie) – please introduce yourself to Amanda. This link will take you to her profile. She was warm, offered supportive hugs, smiled all the time and also was gracious in receiving support. Take a look at her avatar. The cutest.

Meet Liz Ditz – I had the pleasure of meeting her at BlogHer. A special educator teaching students, autism advocate she is also co-editor of Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.

Stepmom MaMere can use some support. Click on her name and see what her activity is…it’ll lead you to groups you can join and help her by just giving some support. A new mom to special needs (married custodial father off kids with special needs).

Jennie (Want a Peanut) – two kids (one on he spectrum) and she is as friendly as she is fierce in advocating for her son. Get to her on Twitter at @wantapeanut - she’s a talker backer.

Aurelia Cotta – meet one of our Mini-Con speakers about privacy in blogging plus she is really interesting on Twitter. She’s at @aureliacotta.

You know Xtremeparnthood? Mom to two boys on the severe side of the spectrum? She’s new here to our community (even though we both swore she was here already!). Can’t wait to get to know her even more. Plus? We love her sense of humor.

Lana Rush - Preacher’s wife with 3 kiddos and their youngest child – a girl – on the spectrum. She emailed me with a link to her blog, turns out I already “knew” her!

Erin Breedlove is a  young adult with special needs and she’s willing to share! Quick…get to know her. You’ll be glad you did. I am not even sure how we found each other but she is a great voice for a young adult in college with special needs.

Click into a group…

Be sure to visit our Anything Goes – the group, where literally, anything goes! Don’t know where to put it? This is the place. In the Mental Illness/Mood Disorder group I just started a group about back to school anxiety, so give us some input. A special group for MEMBERS ONLY (ask to join on the landing page) is the Room for Rants…kind of self-explanatory, right?

Quick tip…

The best place to start when you come to the site is the Site Activity Page. It’s an easy way to pop into current activity. If you need HOW TO pages, you will find them off the home page on the bottom left broken into categories.

For those new to the site, this is our regular Friday thing…to highlight community news/groups and highlight community members. Questions? Feel free to leave it in the comments section.

Have a great weekend.

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