I really try to make as many positive assumptions as I can in a day. With as many things that actually go wrong each day it helps me from being completely overwhelmed and often leaves me pleasantly surprised. I assume competence for Claire as she goes to school to learn and capability for her aide to help her with that. I try to assume that each day good things will happen that I never expect even if they are small things, I will see good. It is nice to go through the day with positive assumptions and on some level we all do it, which is great!

There is one positive assumption that I want to challenge and here it is:

If I don’t see it, then there isn’t a problem.

This pertains to a lot of things; children dying from a lack of clean water, the tragedies of war, I could go on with a long list as the world is very big and we tend to think fairly small but as I normally do, I will focus on Rettland.

For those of us living here in Rettland, our good days are still very, very difficult. While our highs are higher our lows are often lower and they aren’t fun to talk about. Even on Claire’s great days when her eyes sparkle and her laughs warm my soul all of the way to the deepest part of my bones, she can’t speak or walk. On the bad days I get sneered at for not looking disabled when I park in a handicap spot to let her rest after a seizure, people go out of their way to avoid us as if we have some sort of life threatening communicable disease and I manage to break the screen on my iPhone by soaking it in tears.

There is a positive assumption that you could make, as you go through your day, something a little different that would mean the world to me. If you see somebody or think of somebody living in Rettland or on the fringes with some other really hard thing, could you remember:

You could make their day.

Just opening the door at the coffee shop and smiling, sending a friendly text or kindly asking if somebody has a handicapped placecard to park, you could make somebody’s day. You don’t have to wait to help pick up the pieces from a full blown meltdown, most days we are all about half way there, feel free to intervene.