It has been quite a while since the last post to this blog, and it’s about time I just sat and typed a bit about my “why.”   Why I advocate.  Why I am dedicated to this cause.  Why I care so much about special people.
I have used this blog to be like an online [...]

Well, it happened again.  Nearly two years from the time I posted this, my sister had to go to the hospital again.  This time, her group home staff noticed she wasn’t feeling well, something to do with her abdomen and her white count being elevated, so they took her to the local emergency department (ED) [...]

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a week in Tennessee with my family over the Holidays.  It was the first time I had seen my sister in over a year.  She doesn’t travel, and the birth of a new child in our home put a damper on our travel plans for a while as [...]

One of our local magazines, Ocala Magazine, featured a story in Septemer about Stirrups ‘n Strides Therapeutic Riding Center in Citra, Florida.  They have programs specifically for people with disabilities of all ages where they are able to ride and learn about horses.   It wasn’t that article that caught my attention.  It was a short [...]

I have friends and relatives alike who all of a sudden seemed to get on this “gluten-free diet” kick. over the past year or so  It seemed to have come out of nowhere, and I was pretty shocked and amazed when they would make such a big deal out of it.  If you don’t know, [...]

My sister is developmentally disabled.  She is diagnosed with cerebral palsy, mental retardation and autism, but the last of these diagnoses has not always been a part of her life—something I only came to remember in the past few weeks.  Here’s my autism story.
It was late in the 1980s when the movie, Rain Man, came [...]

It’s June. It’s the month for brides. Though my own wedding occurred in August nearly six years ago, I always think of weddings when this time of year rolls around. When you’re planning a special occasion like a wedding and need to consider family, friends, other guests, there’s always a little extra thought needed when [...]

For the past eight months, I’ve been writing about everything from my own personal experiences growing up with a developmentally disabled sister to other people far off and their decisions.    I’ve talked about how thankful I am to have healthy children, and what people who have children with disabilities should do in the form of [...]

How I came to work daily with and for the developmentally disabled didn’t happen overnight.  It isn’t just a job, and it wasn’t my first career of choice.  However, it is something that actually started in me when I was just a child living with a developmentally disabled sister of my own.  She made me [...]

ARC Marion in Ocala, Florida is not only a great place with great people, we have great stories!  We would like to introduce the world to what we know, and how we came to know it.  While our acronym stands for Advocacy Resource Center, we want to be just that.  We advocate for the developmentally [...]