Our mom is the most extraordinary woman I know. She embodies the combined strength and resilience of her mother and father, two Holocaust survivors who endured unspeakable hardships. Growing up in Brooklyn with her parents and sister, our mom knew loss much too early, having lost both sets of grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins in concentration camps. Our grandparents were incredibly hard-working and embodied the survivor spirit, which they clearly passed down to my mother.

As if my mother's family did not struggle enough, my mother was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder when she was only 26. Much later, we found out she has Late-Onset Tay Sachs, a rare disease that leads to progressive loss of muscle functioning. While my mother has struggled with her disability my whole life, she has taken on every possible role as a mother and given everything to her children and her family. While she has survived multiple harrowing falls which resulted in emergency surgeries and stays in physical rehabilitation centers,  she has always fought to stay independent and strong as long as possible, cooking, cleaning, and staying active, never wanting to "bother" anyone by complaining or asking for help. In the meantime, she has listened to us complain and cry about countless issues growing up, be it boys, school, stress at work; never once did she minimize any of them that seem so small in comparison to her own struggles. Even as her disease progressed, one of her favorite activities was attending her favorite talk shows, including Regis & Kelly! For her safety, our mother spends most of her time in her apartment while my father is at work and my sister and I are busy attending graduate school full time, both earning our doctorates in clinical psychology. 

One of her favorite activities to cope with this is watching her favorite talk shows, including Kelly and Michael! We have been so grateful for the joy that your show has brought to her. We grew up watching Regis with our mom; she is a devoted viewer and has watched daily for as long as I can remember. Our mom is a ray of sunshine in everyone's day; she exudes constant positivity and always wears her radiant smile that lights up the room. Our mom would literally give the sweater off her back to a stranger and would spend any amount of time, effort, and energy to make someone's day. She deserves some recognition for all that she does for the people around her, and nothing would make her happier than having the opportunity to appear on a show that she has been devoted to for many years.

No Tiger Mothers here. These are Dragon Mothers - creatures of myth and legend. Loyal. Tough. Impossible to cage. Scaly when they need to be. Raw. As persuasive and straight-talking as any trial lawyer. As flexible and creative as any top executive. Women who don't give in to magical thinking but who work magic regardless. Women who resist suggestions to put their children in institutions. Women who will not be ignored and who will not let their children's lives be ignored, or diminished, or passed over or forgotten. Women who remember. Women who know that love is a commitment made and re-made in the smallest moments, sometimes the ugliest ones. Ballsy and fast-talking. Contemplative and endlessly kind. Women who have looked straight into despair with one beastly eye and gone straight for it. Women breathing fire into the face of grief. Women who rage and comfort. Women who keen and howl and then get on with the business of dinner, errands, groceries, jobs, the future. Women who travel in strong, winging packs through a tangled and dangerous and dark and seemingly endless wilderness that most people would never have the guts to enter, let alone come out on the other side, scathed, yes; broken, yes; but alive, yes, even when their children have died. Badass women who are visions of beauty and strength. ~ Emily Rapp

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My mom is a dragon mom. She lost her two first born children, my two older brothers, Kevin and David to a rare genetic disease. I've watched her breath fire, repel thoughtless comments with her tough armor of scales, crumble under her unimaginable grief and then pick herself up to take care of me. I am deeply grateful to Emily Rapp for sharing her story and, in a way, my mom's. Because of the strength, compassion and courage my mom instilled in me I am now the director of family services for NTSAD. Our incredible network of dragon parents is there for each other without judgment, question or hesitation. It is truly humbling to watch a mother holding her dying child in her arms open her heart to another mother, a total stranger, offering understanding and friendship.