About

About DifferentDream.com

DifferentDream.com is a gathering place for parents of special needs children. Dads and moms in the hospital with seriously or terminally ill kids feel isolated. So do parents whose children live with mental disabilities or chronic illnesses.

If you’re one of those parents, DifferentDream.com can help you find answers to questions like:

• Why did God let this happen to our child?
• Where do we find strength to deal with this diagnosis?
• How do we navigate life in the hospital?
• How do we juggle life inside and outside the hospital?
• When we take our chronically ill child home, how will we cope?
• What will life be like if our child dies?
• If our child survives, how do we regain a normal life?

About Jolene Philo

My husband and I asked those questions and many more after our first child, Allen, was born in 1982. A few hours after his delivery, doctors discovered he had a life-threatening birth defect, and he was immediately flown to the University of Nebraska in Omaha for surgery. Two days later, we finally arrived at the neonatal intensive care unit where he was recovering. Seven hundred miles from home, without friends or family, we felt utterly and completely alone.

Allen survived and is an adult now, but our experiences created a deep desire within me to reach out to parents of critically or chronically ill children. That desire was partially realized in September of 2009 when my book A Different Dream for My Child: Meditations for Parents of Critically or Chronically Ill Children was released by Discovery House Publishers (DHP).

Reader response to A Different Dream for My Child was positive and several parents requested a second book, a resource guide for parents of kids with a wide variety of special needs. Their feedback led to Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs, which was released by DHP November 1, 2011.

This website is another way to reach out to parents of really sick kids and offers the following features:

• A resources page with links to helpful websites, organizations, and literature.
• A blog that addresses current topics and lets you add comments, questions, and advice.
• Information about how to order A Different Dream for My Child: Meditations for Parents of Critically or Chronically Ill Children, which addresses many of these topics in greater depth.
• A contact page which lists several ways to connect with me.

No matter how isolated you feel, you are not alone. I invite you to use this site to connect with a community of parents who have embraced a different dream for their children. Maybe they can help you embrace your child’s dream, too.

You are not alone,
Jolene Philo