So I am a mom of twin boys, Brendan and Jayden, who are now almost 17 years old.

They're identical twins, but they're the rarest form of an identical twin.

It's called a mirror image twin.

So for the first about three months that I was pregnant, I was pregnant with one perfect little child.

And then around nine, almost 12 weeks into the pregnancy, um, they split into two.

And so for the first about nine months, we hit every milestone early.

They were walking, talking, eating, playing, eye contact, you name it.

They were huge child and TV movie stars.

So you were able to see their interaction playing language.

Come on.

Everything was typically developing.

Um, right at 17.5 months is when they started to regress.

Over a two week time period.

Every single day they lost a skill, so they stopped walking.

They stopped talking.

They started pulling out like the Gerber baby food, the stage three baby food.

They started pulling the chunks out of their mouth.

They wouldn't eat anything with chunks, and I had no idea what sensory issues were.

So at the time, I kept arguing with everyone like they're almost two.

They were in the developmentally advanced at that age, so they're probably hitting the terrible twos.

They don't want the food.

They don't want to act.

They don't want to do this.

Who cares?

Like let them just be children.

What I didn't realize was, at the end of that two and a half weeks, that they had basically lost every skill that they had.

They were rocking, they couldn't hold themselves up.

There was no eye contact.

It was this blank stare.

And I kind of didn't know where to go.

This was 14 years ago, almost 15 years ago.

Autism was not a common word that people discussed.

A lot of families.

There's just delays from the very beginning and you don't realize what's going on.

For me, it was so sudden that I was able to say, something's wrong, let's do what we can.

Um, but we lived in New York, and the official age of diagnosis at the time was two years old.

So the best that they could do was put us into early intervention, which at least got us speech, speech therapy, some behavioral therapy and some occupational therapy to get started.

But that was the game changer for us.

My life became so focused on Brendon and Jayden and making sure that they were the best they could be.

I didn't have time for anyone else.

That was my whole focus and over the next I would say about 3 or 4 years.

It took a toll on our marriage.

One parent always feels that need to plan the rest of their lives.

I mean, this is not up to 18.

This is the rest of my life.

So one parent really has to do that struggle.

But the hard part in that is that that's one income for us.

It was me re-entering the workforce.

How do you go back to work almost a decade later?

Um, losing that significant amount of time?

Who's going to take care of the kids?

My kids go to bed at 130 in the morning.

I, at most get three hours of sleep a night.

I juggle three jobs to be able to provide for my kids to live here in South Florida.

And that's living in, as you can see here, a small little two-bedroom apartment, you know, in Delray, and you can't qualify for any kind of government services because we make too much money, but we barely make enough money to live.

They also need extensive therapy, as most therapies that are not covered by insurance.

They need summer camps.

They need caregivers.

Everything costs double once you put the word special needs onto it.

So we're all internally trying to deal with those struggles of how do I work?

How do I provide for my kids?

How do I do this?

How do I just live?

You can put on the smiles all day long on social media, and you can put out this, this face to the world, that life is great, but behind the scenes, somebody is trying to figure out how to navigate this system.

And for me, it was kind of it's been a blessing in disguise.

But learning that we have this incredible village here, and especially in Palm Beach County, but through, you know, through the Treasure Coast, through Broward, through Miami, we have incredible village, special needs families really kind of come together for each other.

Um, for me, it was coming, finding a career that was supportive of me as a mom and as a career woman.

Um, I'm with two and one the crisis line here in Palm Beach County, and I was so blessed to find an organization who understood the need for me to be able to be a full time caregiving mom.

Knowing that you have people you can turn to, you have people who will step in to help watch your kids.

There's resources available to guide you when you don't know where to turn to has truly been a blessing in our lives.

Most people know two elevens across the United States for crisis, for suicide and those kind of things here in South Florida, whether it be Palm Beach, the Treasure Coast, Broward and down to Miami, there's a special needs help line so you can reach out to two on one at any point in time and get a referral to the special needs helpline.

Say you're looking for a special needs dentist.

You're looking for financial resources or a camp for your children.

There's a person who can kind of navigate that maze for you and get you connected to the services.

I think the biggest concern, as any special needs parent, is what happens when I'm gone.

You know, my children are almost 17 years old.

They are brilliant.

They also have no self-help skills.

No life skills.

There's no stranger dangers.

There's no sensitivities to danger.

They will walk off with anyone they don't recognize.

You know, a car speeding at them is going to hurt them.

So my hope is that when that time comes, you know, I will have been able to afford a home that is theirs for them to inherit, that they have some self-help skills that they can provide for themselves with the help of a care giver, surface and not have to go into a residential, um, type facility.

I wish that when my kids were newly diagnosed, the first thing I wish I was that somebody would have told me that it's going to get better.

It's going to be okay.

We all have this vision of these perfect, this perfect pregnancy, the perfect life, the perfect children and all of these things that when it's pulled out from under you, you're your world kind of collapses.

You don't see that there's any way to make progress.

You can't see the hope you get into this bubble when you're newly diagnosed of like this fight or flight syndrome of it's never going to change.

This is going to be the rest of my life.

And that's not the case whatsoever.

We learn to adapt.

We learn to lean on people.

We learn to accept help.

But I'm glad that for myself, I pushed my kids as hard as I did when they were young.

Now, at 17 or almost 17, what I'm seeing is that my kids, every single day of the week, we are at a theme park.

We're at a concert, we're at a museum.

They're in situations that typical children can't handle.

Going to do.

I do adaptive things.

Do I bring headphones?

Of course.

Do I have special candies or snacks?

Do I have those things?

Do we talk through everything first?

But they're able to better handle things now because I did the hard work when they were younger.

Be hopeful for the future.

Our.

I've watched so many positive changes over the years.

I mean, we've gone through so many hard times and so many beautiful times that I never thought that I was going to have these experiences.

Don't let a quote unquote disability limit yourself, and don't let that limit your children because they have so much potential.

There is so many changes in this world, but you can make that happen.