I have a new post at her.meneutics: “Actually, It Takes More Than a Village.” It begins: I picked up Time with trepidation. I’m nearly six months pregnant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Annie Murphy Paul had to tell me in her cover story, “How the first nine months shape the rest of your…

I’ve been sick for ten days now. It started with a cold, then laryngitis, then some nausea and general fatigue. As Penny keeps asking me, “Do you still feel yucky, Mom?” And the answer is, yes. Still yucky. William says, “I hope you feel better!” and he loves opening up the cough drops for me.…

As Down Syndrome Awareness Month comes to a close, I’d like to highlight the four “Perfectly Human” posts that have focused upon relationships with individuals with Down syndrome. There’s much work to be done on behalf of people with Down syndrome–advocacy, medical research, educational advances. And yet the work that seems most significant to me…

When I was a kid, I loved the movie Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels. I thought Steve Martin was hilarious. If you haven’t seen it, or to refresh your memory, as a part of a scam, Steve Martin pretended to be a man with mental disabilities. (Just to be clear–he wasn’t actually playing a character with disabilities.…

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Amy Julia Becker

Amy Julia Becker writes about theology, disability, family, and culture. Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith—caring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.  A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.

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