I just woke up from a nap...

This is written by Jessica Law Feltenberger, a tuberous sclerosis mom. It's so familiar and hauntingly real for those of us that face this every day.

I just woke up from a nap...

I had a dream that I had a child and my child was sick with a rare, incurable disease. As I sat in a cold sterile hospital room and looked into the faces of multiple doctors I asked what any normal person asks when faced with a diagnosis..."What can we expect?"...And my words clearly English felt as though they were foreign, as if they were falling against deaf ears, and they were met with blank stares in return. I woke up and the haunting reality crept up my spine, the familiar heartache of being a young mother asking the question "But what can we expect?".

There is no answer to this seemingly simple, normal question. There is no textbook standard. Every morning you wake up and you open a new door. What awaits us on the other side of that door NO ONE knows. We open doors to dreams, to nightmares, to realty, to good days, to bad, to days that we just don't think we can make it through, to days that test our patience and days that we feel as though our entire worlds are crashing down around us, to days that we watch our children struggle, to days that we watch them smile and light up a room...

"What can we expect?" We can expect an adventure. Days filled with unknowing, wild, alarming adventure. Days that teach us to stand when our feet can surely walk no further. An adventure that teaches us the depths of love and strength of our minds and bodies. We can expect to become warriors fighting a battle. We can expect to become the best person that we were meant to be because we were chosen above anyone else to take on this quest. We can expect to learn the unwavering love of a child and just how deep our love runs for them. We can expect to find love and support from the most surprising places and that we will NEVER fight this battle alone.

To the young mother in my dreams, to the young mothers who have yet to know, to the mother's who have walked this path before me, to the scared mother I STILL AM TODAY....You can expect to become a hero.