Passing for Normal

End of year wrap up

Wishing you all peace and joy in the last few days of the year. We are exhausted and are off for a bit to recharge. This passing for normal stuff is hard, sending love to you all.

Formal and deep grief

Chloe's back! We talk about the end of the school year and formal for all of you that remember the dress drama that started so many months ago. Chloe talks about trying to have fun and how much more complicated everything is without her sister her. As invisible as the grief for a mother can be, siblings seem to be even more forgotten. So Chloe wanted to share her experience to encourage others out there grieving as teens and remind people of how real grief is. Enjoy!

Revenge decor and holiday grief

In this weeks episode we discuss a encounters with the neighbors that could have been normal but were anything but that and why Colleen is not aggressively decorating the front yard for Christmas. We also discuss just how hard the holidays are and how our current best strategy is to try and escape.

Routine and heartbreak

In this episode Jared and Colleen discuss the importance of routine and how they continue to rely on it as a tool in coping with grief. Trigger warning, we talk about how something as simple as making coffee helped Jared on the day that Claire passed. We also discuss the recent news that has devastated the Rett community, of a child passing away due to complications within a clinical trial for gene therapy and how that has lead Colleen to use the platform that Rettland Foundation has to put a memorial fund together for that family. Details can be found at http://rettland.org/heros-memorial-fund/

IKEA and marraige

As promised, in this episode we discuss our 25th wedding anniversary, but not in a typical format. Since Colleen just got a new workspace, we decided to discuss what we have learned over the years from all of our adventures in IKEA. And we have moved a lot. We hope you enjoy this lighter episode with perspectives of the full range of our life from young and newly married to exhausted parents to grievers who probably shouldn't have been assembling furniture. Thank you for listening. Would love to know what you think, send us a message on Instagram @passing_for_normal

Celebrating

In this episode we discuss the October surprise that nobody was expecting, Colleen's sudden urge to celebrate Halloween, which is odd to observe from the Southern Hemisphere. We talk about how hard it is to get to a place of celebration in light of grief and how different it is to suddenly have the capacity.

Claire's Birthday

In this episode we discuss how awkward October is, between Rett Syndrome awareness in our new world where nobody knows about it, the anniversary of the diagnosis and Claire's birthday. Jared and Colleen share their separate strategies for dealing with the birthday and when to tell new people about Claire.

Rett Syndrome Awareness

October is Rett Syndrome awareness month so we dedicated this episode to things to be aware of, in regards to Rett syndrome, particularly what you CAN do to make it better.

R U OK

First and foremost, we talk about the 9th World Rett Syndrome Congress. Very exciting! Sept. 14 is R U OK day in Australia, an effort lead by a suicide prevention group. We talk about why this is so important and how having a child with special needs doesn't exempt you from all the normal stuff in life.

Love/hate of Social Media

In this episode we talk about how each of us uses social media differently and how complicated our relationships with it are. We also give a quick update/ follow up on Chloe's school.