Christmas is just around the corner, and I’d like to invite you to purchase a copy of my new book, A Pair of Sparkly Sneakers, for that special someone. It’s getting rave reviews, and people of all ages and backgrounds are connecting to this little purple book which chronicles the struggle and the triumph of my journey of self-discovery as a first-time mom.

I wanted to give you all a sneak peek…so here is an excerpt from the beginning of the story. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

I pulled into the school parking lot, cut the ignition, and tried to martial my resources for what lay ahead. I was there to collect my son – just barely five years old – from the principal’s office, where he’d been sent for throwing snowballs. It was not the first time my little boy had landed in the office. But it would be the last.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself for what I’d come to do. I found myself thinking back, retracing the steps that had brought us here to this moment when everything would change.

It was not the first change we’d faced as a family – not by a long shot. But it would become the one change we chose to define us – to defy all the other labels that had been so haphazardly thrust upon us.

I drew in one last, shaky breath and made my way into the school, bypassing the principal’s office, turning sharply to the right, down the hall that would take me to my son’s classroom. I’d attended this school myself as a child, and each step evoked vivid memories; the squeak of sneakers on the dark maroon tiles as we’d line up for lunch, the faded brown door to my first-ever classroom, the stairs leading down to the mysterious room in the basement where the art teacher fired up her kiln.

I had liked school well enough – or so I had thought – back in those elementary days, and school had certainly liked me. I was a quiet, eager to please, precocious student. The kind of student that teachers silently blessed as they dealt with the loudmouthed bully, the Chatty Cathy who wouldn’t buckle down, or the hopeless Bullfrogs reading group, comprised of the most inept readers.

A teacher’s dream, that’s what my fearless leaders always reported to my parents at conference time. Wish we had a class full of students just like her! My mother would float home, thrilled with such laudable news, while my father would jokingly grill me as to whether my A’s were “strong” A’s, or just squeaking-by ones.

A teacher’s dream. It’s what I’d always been. It’s what I’d always assumed my children would be. Yet here I was, on my way to meet with my son’s special education teacher about the nightmare he had become.

If you like what you’ve read, you can buy the book here