Loving Lindsey: Raising a Daughter with Special Needs

Linda Atwell and her strong-willed daughter, Lindseya high-functioning young adult with intellectual disabilitieshave always had a complicated relationship. A touching memoir with unexpected moments of joy and humor, Loving Lindsey is a story about independence, rescue, resilience, and, most of all, love.. As Lindsey grows closer to Emmett, she slips further away from her familybut Linda, determined to save her daughter, refuses to give up. But when Lindsey graduates from Silverton High School at nineteen and gets a job at Goodwill, she also moves into a newly remodeled cottage in her parents’ backyardand Linda believes that all their difficult times may finally be behind them. As Lindsey plunges into adulthood, she experiments with sex, considers a tubal ligation, and at twenty quits Goodwill and runs away with Emmett, a man more than twice her age. Life, however, proves not to be so simple

They have two incredible adult children. She owned a successful home décor business for ten years before switching to adjusting catastrophe insurance claims and climbing roofs for a living. Linda earned her BA from George Fox College, but it is her entrepreneurial and adventuresome spirits that have inspired her career goals. Linda Atwell lives in Silverton, Oregon with her husband, John. Atwell is happiest traveling the world, and hopes to get fifty stamps in her passport before it expi

Atwell writes with clarity and contemplation through the triumphs and tragedies of raising someone with special needs. Atwell's tender, funny, real, and at times heart-wrenching memoir about her daughterwho as an adult woman still sleeps with a Cabbage Patch doll yet holds a job, gets a place of her own and falls in love, as doomed as it may beportrays the self-sufficiency and experiences that I want my son to someday enjoy. Linda Atwell writes with generosity and depth about what it means to fiercely love and accept each other."—Ariel Gore, author of The E