I shouldn’t even be here.  By that I mean on this earth.  When I was born, I did not breathe for roughly 40 minutes.  The chances of an infant surviving this is zero percent.  Due to the oxygen deprivation, I have severe cerebral palsy which just affects me physically.

Throughout my life I was told that I would never achieve my goals and dreams due to my disability.  My high school teachers basically had me sentenced to life in a group home with me doing a boring, to me at least, computer job because I taught myself how to type with my nose at roughly age nine.  Dealing with having my dreams and goals continually dismissed and being verbally abused at school and at home every single day during all four years of my high school career was quite tiring.  I became a born again Christ-follower the summer after my sophomore year of high school.  I was a devout Christian and went to church until my middle 30s.  Being a part of the church back then helped my depression as it gave me a sense of belonging.  I was very depressed even though nobody knew it because I was, and still am, good at hiding my true feelings. I know having my dreams and goals regularly dashed by almost everyone around me contributed to my depression.  I was also dealing with family issues, physical, emotional, and verbal abuse by my parents and not being able to do what my friends were doing.  After receiving Christ, He let me ignore the naysayers and kept me fighting to ultimately do His Will.  He is continuing to do so even though everything hasn’t worked out how I would have liked.  I also still deal with emotional health issues but like my cerebral palsy, they do not define who I am.  God continues to  love me through this life.

I am truly blessed with my wonderful husband, Chip.  It was Chip that also gave me the courage, and continues to do so, to be who God wanted me to be…To be myself, and now, not what the church or my abusive family wanted me to be.  He continues to support me and encourage me as I grow and change.  Chip was was a friend of our family so that’s how we met.  We dated for 4 and a half years before getting married April 12, 2003.  Without him, my book, Gentle Firmness would not exist. The first edition of my book, Gentle Firmness, is no longer available due to the unethical business of the publishers.  I’m currently working on the second edition of Gentle Firmness and my children’s book is about to be published.  Thank you for your patience.

So, what led me to write a 500 page book with my nose?  I believed, at the time,  God did.  I am more open in my spiritual life and different Entities.  I know Jesus still wants me to try to spread love and gentleness.  Ever since I was a child, I have had a deep love for young children.  They, especially infants and toddlers, have always fascinated me.  Being severely physically disabled, I would sit in my wheelchair or lie on the floor and observe and interact with infants whenever they were around.  I still do.  I believe that I have been given a gift by the spiritual world to be able to see children as the beautiful, unique people that they are.  Plus, my severe physical disability makes me reliant on others for everything so I understand how children feel more.

My education is another reason why I wrote my book. I went on to get my Bachelor’s Degree in early childhood education from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in August 2008.  Then in December 2013 I again graduated with my Master’s Degree in early childhood education from SIUC.  I typed all my papers, presentations, and Master’s Thesis with my nose.   How did I survive and excel?   With the amazing support of my husband and family.

It was while working on my Master’s Degree that I believed that God decided to make things even more interesting by having me write a book.  After becoming a born again Christ-follower, I studied the Bible, hungry to know God more.  Now I seek the spiritual world in other ways and still come up with the same convictions for children.  With my deep love of young children, I always struggled with the rod verses in the book of Proverbs that seem to advocate spanking children, because seeing how children react to being spanked/hit, and knowing what I know about how young children learn, it just never made sense that God would want children to be spanked.  For example, I saw the heartbreaking event of a wonderful Christian mother who truly wanted to do the best for her children, slap her toddlers hand for the first time because he kept touching something she didn’t want him to.  It took a couple slaps before he confusingly looked at his stinging hand then at his mom to try to figure out why she hit him.  I’ve also seen children “lovingly” spanked and still freeze up when they disobeyed.  Interestingly, when positive discipline was used with these same children, they cooperated.

It was out of concern for these children and my knowledge of child development that made me question even more why God would supposedly tell us to spank when research and my own observations showed how harmful it was to children. I began doing intense, prayerful research into these rod verses. I read books and articles from Christian leaders and theologians on both sides of the spanking controversy. I tried to find other verses besides the well-known rod verses to try and back up the belief that spanking was indeed Biblical. I also spoke with many people who grew up in loving Christian homes and were “lovingly” spanked but were still emotionally scarred. I would spend hours upon hours dictating notes to my husband.  Then I would take those notes and type each chapter on my laptop with my nose. I believe God revealed Himself to me so clearly. My husband would read each chapter after I finished writing it, and he would be amazed at how different and deeper the chapter would be from the notes I had dictated to him.

Needless to say, the deeper I got into this journey, the more I found that the Bible does not support spanking children in any way.  The Bible does teach gentle but firm discipline for children, hence, the title of my book, Gentle Firmness.  This book has been the best and hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  My knowledge of Who God is has grown tremendously in writing my book.  Jesus is my teacher.  Now I am under the belief that the church is trying to get people to be who they want us to be and I truly believe that most of the Christian church doctrine is toxic.  Love is the important thing.

Let me briefly explain that the Biblical rod was a huge heavy walking stick with spikes on one end of it.  Shepherds never hit their sheep with it nor did they break the sheep’s leg.  The rod was used to protect the sheep from predators.  The Hebrew word for the rod is Shebet.  This is symbolic for authority and discipline.  It was never intended to be used to hit young children.

All young children can be disciplined without punishment.  I’ve worked with some difficult children.  One tested me by continuing to throw sand out of a sensory table.  After telling her a few times to keep the sand in the table because someone might slip and fall, she purposely did it again.  I looked her in the eye and told her that she either leave the sand in the table or she would need to play somewhere else.  She looked at me for a moment then decided to play somewhere else.  I was prepared to have someone help her play somewhere else had she ignored me.  Discipline is much different from punishment as discipline teaches and guides.  Punishment inflicts pain in order to stop behavior.  Some of the discipline strategies that work well are modeling, child-proofing, validating feelings, fulfilling the child’s physical and emotional needs, setting realistic limits and boundaries, helping children comply, giving choices, and using natural and logical consequences with children.  In addition, using the Resources for Infant Educarers, also known as the RIE Approach, and the Attachment Parenting philosophy with infants starting from birth helps with discipline as you communicate with them before doing anything with them.  For example, tell the infant, “I’m going to pick you up now,” and give the infant time to respond.  This shows respect for infants.

I was so naive and ignorant when I wrote and published Gentle Firmness.  I was in the doctrine of “God’s in control.” I really thought the book would take off and that Christians would change once they understood that God didn’t want them to spank/hit their children.  I thought I would be working with a ministry but I was rejected over and over.  The amount of hate I got from Christians was unbelievable.  It was during these years that other traumatic things happened to me and I started to deconstruct and reconstruct my faith.  As I mentioned above, I am still a Christ-follower but I can’t subscribe to any doctrine.  I feel freer.  I am no longer trying to “save” people because we’re all good and Love ultimately wins.

I’m continuing to  find myself. Have been for a few years now intensely and I’m not the “sweet, good Christian little disabled girl” everyone seems to see me as.

I’m a badass, humble, loving, kind, Christ-follower who loves to party, get tattoos, is a free spirited woman who will always speak up for the children and the oppressed.  Unfortunately, Covid has caused so much things to change as my husband and I are still high risk.

My beliefs are definitely evolving and I now consider myself a mystic Christ-follower.

I am a member of several professional organizations including Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Zero to Three, Attachment Parenting International (API), and subscribe to Exchange Magazine.

My second book–a children’s book about my cerebral palsy—is about to be published.  It’s a unique book that shows what severe cerebral palsy looks like. I have yet to see any other picture books that accurately portray severe cerebral palsy. That’s why I wrote this book and was very specific about the illustrations showing how my wheelchair always has a lot of support to hold me in the proper sitting position as I can’t sit up on my own at all. I would fall right out of a standard wheelchair. I also want children like me to have a book that is inspiring to them. I want a child with any severe disability, especially those with cerebral palsy, to know that there’s hope. Even if the adults around them are telling them they will never achieve their goals and dreams, they can look at my book and just keep fighting for what they want to achieve!

As I also said, there will be a second edition of Gentle Firmness which will be more secular than before with a chapter with the biblical knowledge of not spanking/hitting children.