Mothering Amanda: Musings on the experience of raising a child with cerebral palsy

Raising a child with a disability is a compelling and profoundly transformative experience. The child's diagnosis represents a unique form of interpersonal loss in which the object of the loss is still a commanding presence in the parents' lives. Despite this presence, however, the imagined narrative of the child's future is irrevocably lost, and this loss is experienced with intensity. New narratives must be created and continuously altered as the child proceeds through stages of the life cycle. Parenting a child with a disability also propels parents into a stigmatised social category for which their previous experiences have generally left them ill prepared. This work offers a glimpse into the emotional and social experience of disability through the lens of my own experience of mothering a child with severe cerebral palsy.