iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

What comes to mind when you read, “Children with Down syndrome may no longer be born”? I hear: eugenics. Dystopian fiction. Various countries missing out on beauty in the name of progress. GoodNewsYouMissed posted exactly this sentence last week. I believe they are gravely—horrifically—mistaken…

amyjuliabecker.substack.com

I Don’t Want to Take Away Down Syndrome

I want to eradicate the stigma surrounding Down syndrome and both support and celebrate the lives of humans as we are. {Plus two links worth your time}

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Exhausted from caregiving? Resenting your spouse? Keeping score over who does more? Therapist Monica DiCristina joins me to help parents of kids w/ disabilities recognize chronic stress & find small ways to respond differently—even when circumstances don’t change. amyjuliabecker.com/chronic-stre...

amyjuliabecker.com

Is Your Marriage Just Surviving? Disability, Chronic Stress, and Caregiving • Monica DiCristina, LPC - Amy Julia Becker

Monica DiCristina and Amy Julia Becker help parents of children with disabilities navigate chronic stress in marriage, recognize unhealthy coping patterns, and prioritize connection when circumstances...

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Nancy Goodfellow makes *Special,* a very particular story relevant to the broader human experiences of wanting to fit in, struggling to navigate new social situations, learning to trust yourself and others, and growing up in a world riddled with heartache right alongside love and beauty.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It all begs us to turn our attention—which is to say our time, our energy, our love—toward the human. Toward ourselves in our embodied, needy, beautiful humanity. Toward the humans all around us in their messy, imperfect, goodness. Toward slowing down and showing up. 2/2

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Bill McKibben's final line in his NYT essay caught my attention: “We’re creating a world that’s only fit for something artificial.” He summed up my recent thoughts about the fast pace of our world, the impending sense of doom over AI, politics, and climate, and the disconnections we feel. 1/

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

amyjuliabecker.com/helping-kids...

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Grief is a reaction to love." How can we help children with disabilities process grief and loss?

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’ve been on the search for a middle-grade book that portrays a young girl with Down syndrome as a fully realized character for many years. I wrote about this struggle for TIME, and I would like to add a postscript to that essay. I’ve finally found the book I’ve been looking for...

amyjuliabecker.substack.com

This is the Book I’ve Been Waiting For

Books can be windows and mirrors. Special is both, and Penny and I found beauty, sorrow, and real life reflected in its pages. {Plus four links worth your time}

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We become who we are only if and as we develop a greater capacity to both give and receive love. And that capacity happens only when we refuse the shortcuts. Only when we take the time. Only when we see each other in all our wondrous complexity.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How can we help a child grieve when they may not have the words to tell us they’re hurting? Grief doesn’t always look like sadness. Therapist Sissy Goff shares ways parents can: - Help children with disabilities express their emotions - Set loving boundaries around difficult behaviors - & more...

Podcast graphic for Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker, Episode 31, featuring grayscale screenshots of Sissy Goff and Amy Julia Becker on either side of a photo of child sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a brick wall, and wearing headphones and covering her face in her arms. Text overlay reads “When kids with disabilities grieve.”

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Caregiving often happens through our hands: zipping a coat, helping someone get dressed, tending to physical needs. Jen Pollock Michel reflects on Psalm 90: “Lord, establish the work of our hands.” She suggests this as a prayer, a refrain, for caregivers—the work of our hands, offered to God.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The work of parenting is not trying to make life more frictionless. Rather, we’re learning to slow down, to change our expectations, to receive help, to make room for a different pace or a different way of doing things. 2/

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hearts and souls, of parents and children, are formed by having to practice things over and over, by enduring hardship, by engaging with tasks challenging enough to stretch us, to develop patience within us, to prompt us to ask for help, to make mistakes, to learn, to try again. 1/

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"It's hard to be a woman because often caregiving responsibilities fall to us. One of the challenges are all the contingencies that come with caregiving. Caregiving doesn’t come according to this wonderfully planned schedule. It is so extemporaneous. It just happens in these moments. It visits us."

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There are many things in life that we don’t get to choose. But we do get to receive our children as they are. We get to receive one another as we are. We get to receive ourselves as we are.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Finding Spiritual Rhythms in the Chaos of Caregiving amyjuliabecker.com/spiritual-rh...

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Caregiving is so extemporaneous. It just happens in these moments. It visits us." I felt my shoulders relax as I talked on the podcast with Jen Pollock Michel about caregiving and families experiencing disability. So grateful for her wisdom!

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Is it harder to have a child with a disability? I recently talked w/ the new mom of a baby with Down syndrome. Her emotions were raw & beautiful. That same combination of wonder and heartache I felt when Penny was first with us, that fear and delight, that sense of being on the brink of despair at…

amyjuliabecker.substack.com

Is It Harder to Have a Child With a Disability?

The long, slow, hard, beautiful work of receiving one another as we are. {Plus three links worth your time}

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What happens when the rhythms of caregiving make it difficult to establish any rhythms at all? Drawing on her experience caring for her mom who has Alzheimer’s, Jen Pollock Michel considers what spiritual practices can look like in the midst of caregiving for a family member with a disability. 1/

Podcast graphic for Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker, Episode 30, featuring grayscale screenshots of Jen Pollock Michel and Amy Julia Becker on either side of a calendar covered with sticky notes. Text reads, “Spiritual Rhythms in caregiving chaos?”

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I love that truth from the Lucky Few podcast. For anyone in the disability space who wants an update on the state of legislation and policy related to disability right now, this Lucky Few podcast episode offers a very helpful overview.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“The issues are complex, but one truth remains clear: disabled people belong in our schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities—without having to earn or prove their worth.”

podcasts.apple.com

336: What We Need to Know About Disability Policy Right Now w/ Ashley Barlow

Podkastepisode · The Lucky Few · 14. september · 1 t 9 min

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Sometimes I get intimidated by the word "advocacy" because it makes me feel like I'm supposed to be doing a lot of things that I don't know how to do—and if I'm not doing those things, then I'm failing as a mom. So I needed this conversation with Meghan Burke! youtu.be/6IIDi_V0wyw

youtu.be

How to Navigate IEP Meetings and Disability Services with Meghan Burke, PhD

YouTube video by Amy Julia Becker

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Why does navigating disability services get so much harder after high school? The systems are fragmented, the rules are different, and the responsibility often falls on families to figure it all out. Here’s what families need to know—and why connecting with other families matters so much:

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"There are families ahead of you who have already gone through this. The best resource we have is each other... 'Here's what you should expect. Here's the paperwork you need.'” Navigating IEPs and disability services can be complicated. Meghan Burke gives the practical advice I need:

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Inflexibility often arises out of fear. Fear hardens in the face of judgment but softens in the face of love.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm literally putting notes all over reminding myself to stop and breathe for five minutes—morning, noon, night—to help me slow down, pay attention, return to a spacious place. I usually forget those five minute intervals even with my bright green sticky note reminders. What has surprised me...

amyjuliabecker.substack.com

The Pace of Love

Discerning what is mine to do—and what is mine to do right now {Plus four links worth your time}

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Vanderbilt professor Meghan Burke joins me to share what non-adversarial advocacy looks like—from special education and IEPs to the transition into adult disability services—and where to find support along the way. amyjuliabecker.com/parent-advoc...

amyjuliabecker.com

How to Navigate IEP Meetings and Disability Services with Meghan Burke, PhD - Amy Julia Becker

Disability researcher Meghan Burke joins Amy Julia Becker to share practical strategies for parent advocacy, navigating IEP meetings, building school partnerships, and accessing adult disability servi...

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Do you have to fight everyone around the table to advocate well for your child? Many parents, including me, feel intimidated by disability advocacy. We worry we’re not doing enough and don't know enough to be a good advocate for our child and a good teammate to the other people in our child's life.

Podcast graphic for Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker, Episode 29. Two grayscale screenshots of a video call with Meghan Burke and Amy Julia Becker appear on either side of a colorful school-themed background with an apple, books, and a pencil cup. Large text in the center reads, “OVERWHELMED BY IEPs?”

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

And spending time w/ eyes closed in the presence of a God who is eternally loving us & everyone around us and holding all of creation in love is yet another way to look at what cannot be seen—the deeper truth, the eternal beauty, the solid core of the image of God within each and every human being…

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

And we need one eye open to an unseen and eternal reality deep within us. Spending time and offering my attention to those who cannot impress me with their conformity to a shiny, fast-paced world is one way of training my eyes to look at what cannot be seen, the enduring glory of beloved humanity.2/

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I learned recently that I have monovision—one eye is nearsighted & the other is farsighted, so I can only see clearly with both of them open at once. It’s made me wonder if perhaps learning to see with the eyes of love is like that—we need one eye open to a different reality right in front of us 1/

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

“I was just so terrified of this prenatal diagnosis. And I thought everything that's ever been good is gonna just go away.”

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Spending time and offering my attention to those who cannot impress me with their conformity to a shiny, fast-paced world is one way of training my eyes to look at what cannot be seen, the enduring glory of beloved humanity.

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Amy Julia Becker @amyjuliabecker.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

In a world of fragments and distractions, it is good to pause to reflect and remember even the hardest things. The act of remembering is one of re-membering, of tethering ourselves to the ones who have gone before us and all the ones who remain.

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