Oppurtunites

Today I wrote my author’s note for my poem, Destiny, which will be published in Connect to Northern Westchester Magazine in the fall. First, let me say that I am beside myself about that! I can’t believe someone wants to publish my poem! 

Second, writing the note has me thinking again about opportunities - or lack of them. I am so unusual in the Fragile X community in that my parents did not just accept my fate. They gave me opportunities to learn. I am so unbelievably lucky.

So many of my peers are never given any chances to grow and learn. Nonspeakers of all diagnoses are never given opportunities to be more than their diagnosis. The thing is, that puts fate in the driver’s seat.

I do not believe that fate tells us who we are. But to be more, we all need opportunities. My parents gave me the chance to be more than just Fragile X. For that I am eternally grateful.

Destiny
​Is your fate written in the stars?
Resting in your heart, put there by a divine hand?
Encoded in your genes? 
No escape.
Destiny has you in her grasp.

Or is your fate your own to mold? 
To create and shape and reshape
To paint and repaint
To chisel and smash and crush 
Only to reform again
As you, the artist, begin to sculpt anew
While God watches and smiles and celebrates
The beauty his creation creates.

Is your fate written in the stars?
Or is it a story written by you? ​