This Thanksgiving Eve, I have much to be deeply grateful for. It is also a time when I miss my girl something fierce. In the next few weeks, her behavior support team will try a new intervention that is tough, tough enough to have to go through an external review process before they can implement it.

Her new ways of pulling law enforcement and child protective services into her orbit when she’s out of control put her and the team increasingly at risk for the worst unintended consequences imaginable. I can’t spend much time thinking about the bleak options we have nor about what it will be like for her when/if the new intervention is put in place. I know that the best years we had with our María were ones when we used a similar intervention. I can still go back and look at the frequency data we kept for her during that time, trace the trend line that improved dramatically very quickly once we put that intervention in place. I just had so wished and hoped that the work we did then would stabilize her behavior more permanently.

So tonight I miss my daughter and am grateful that my spouseman made this little video that makes me laugh. I will stay busy and I will welcome our friends and family to the feast tomorrow. I am thankful for love. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.