When I first received a review copy of Going Solo While Raising Children with Disabilities by Laura E. Marshak, Ph.D., I put it aside. Two years ago, I didn’t have to think about single parenting, co-parenting or all the other complexities that come with marital separation.
After Norrin was diagnosed, I started reading every book on autism I could find. In almost every book, there was always something on marriage and the divorce rate. Couples with special needs children have a higher divorce rate. I don’t know if that’s true or just merely coincidence.
Related: The Day My Son Was Diagnosed with Autism
Last year, when I realized Joseph and I needed to separate I started looking for books that could provide some guidance. They all seemed to focus on single parenting, separation and divorce for parents raising “typical” children. And I knew that they wouldn’t work. I knew those stories wouldn’t reflect mine.
When Joseph moved out, I was going through books and rearranging furniture, I found Going Solo While Raising Children with Disabilities. The book I set aside because I thought I wouldn’t ever need it, reappeared at the time I needed it most.
Related: Learning to Spend Time Alone
Going Solo While Raising Children with Disabilities is a MUST READ especially for those new to the single parenting world.
About Going Solo
This is the first book for solo parents whose kids have a wide variety of disabilities (physical, neurodevelopmental, and psychiatric), and who are widowed, separated, divorced, single by choice, adoptive or foster parents, or military spouses with deployed partners.
In Going Solo, Laura Marshak skillfully weaves together extensive interviews and survey results of solo mothers and fathers (and grandparents, too) with reliable coping strategies gleaned from 25 years as a practicing psychologist and specialist in disability adjustment. The book’s insightful personal narratives and the author’s deconstruction of these to offer universal lessons—from the basic (e.g., practice mindfulness to de-stress) to the profound (e.g., cultivate gratitude as the antidote to resentment)—an help readers assess and transform their own lives for the better. Agencies, extended family, and friends will want a copy of this book, too, to support the solos they care about.
I appreciated that this was an easy read and the kind of book where you can read what you want, when you want. I don’t always have the time (or honestly, the desire) to read parenting books straight through. I typically skim the chapters, go through the table of contents and index to find the information I want to read.
The most useful chapters for me were:
- Coping Day to Day
- Divorced Parents Making It Work
- Finding Supports in All Kinds of Places and
- Dating, and Sometimes “Happily-Ever-Afters.”
There are also chapters that focus on single dads, conceiving on your own, bereavement and military families.
But the words that provided the most comfort were the personal narratives. They offered honesty, practical advice, insight, inspiration and hope.
Going Solo While Raising Children with Disabilities is available on www.woodbinehouse.com.
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