MARY MCHUGH

What's New

In February, 1999, my book Special Siblings: Growing Up With Someone With a Disability was published by Hyperion.

It's partly my story of growing up with my brother Jack who has cerebral palsy and mental retardation and lives in a home for retarded adults in Deland, Florida. It's partly the story of over a hundred other siblings of people with disabilities - all disabilities, not just mental retardation. And it is partly the advice of people who have specialized in this field and know the feelings and reactions of siblings who have a brother or sister with a disability. I learned a great deal about myself and my relationship to my brother while I was writing this book.

Margaret Moorman, who wrote "My Sister's Keeper," says: "This beautiful, balanced, informative book will touch a chord in anyone whose brother or sister has a disability. With unfliinching honesty, McHugh describes her own painful feelings of resentment, shame, and sadness for her brother. But she also describes the strength and good cheer of many others whose family stories will serve as standards of acceptance and love."

The Kirkus Review said: "For siblings of those with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities, here is helpful advice, comfort, and the company of others who've been there. . .McHugh doesn't shrink from the tough issues, even when looking at her own actions. Mostly, she reports, she blocked her brother and his problems out of her life as much as possible. So on one level, this is about McHugh's own journey - one viewed wrenchingly from another angle when one of her own children becomes blind and has a leg amputated as a result of complications from diabetes. But moving on from her own experience, McHugh offers information, understanding, and resources for others, on a wide range of issues: from childhood fears about the parents' marriage to troubles in one's own marriage caused by caring for a disabled sibling, to the urge to somehow make it all better ("For a sibling, there is nothing more painful than watching your mother's heart break because one of her children is wounded.") McHugh considers needs and problems for each age and developmental group, from childhood on. Real help, real comfort for those personally affected."

A reader who is the sibling of a sister with severe disabilities called this book "a small masterpiece."

Upcoming events:

June 15: "Woman's World" magazine (cover date June 22) has a story about me and Jack. It's under "My Story."

August 11: Book signing, speech and discussion at the Barnes and Noble in Rochester to the parents and siblings of people with developmental disabilities at the Heritage Christian Home.

September: Article in Parents magazine.

October 4: National Down Syndrome Walk in Roxbury, New Jersey. Book signing and discussion

October 20. 7:30. Speech and book signing for parents and siblings of those with Down Syndrome in Roxbury.

I welcome e-mail, so write to me and tell me about your own sibling or child with a disability.

You can order my book from amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.