Join Us! Monday, November 6th, 2023 We are thrilled to invite you to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation (CPF) Annual Gala on November 6, 2023. CPF’s mission is to be a catalyst for change for the 17 million people living with cerebral palsy around the world. We work to improve healthcare, education and make sure that individuals have access to the latest technology. Proceeds from this years event will support CPF’s programs and life changing work. We are excited for you to join this not to be missed event.   Cerebral Palsy affects more than 17million people worldwide, there are million ..read more

Japan, the farthest I’ve traveled to by myself: My cousin, Reeva, had recently moved to Kyoto, Japan to learn Japanese for a year, and she convinced me to visit her there. I didn’t know anyone else living in Japan and Reeva was going to be there short term, so I couldn’t possibly pass up going! I was admittedly pretty nervous about traveling all the way across the world— a 24-hour long plane trip, including a layover— especially to a country that uses a language that isn’t remotely like anything I was used to. But, again, I wasn’t going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Since I did ..read more

Welcome to the second part of my travel series! In the previous post, I wrote about how I found my love for traveling through my trip to Madrid and Paris. Looking back, not only do I realize that these trips took place during very different phases of my adult life, but they also mark the different phases of my CP in recent years. Although CP is the result of a non-progressive brain injury, many folks experience a decline in their physical abilities in their adult years — the inevitable effect of aging, not just for those with disabilities, but for everyone. Well, for me, I’m seeing the peak o ..read more

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JUNE 2020 Cerebral Palsy Foundation Early Detection & Intervention Network Lowers the Age of Cerebral Palsy Diagnosis to Less Than One Year New Hope for Families The May 2020 issue of PEDIATRICS the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, highlighted the results of the Cerebral Palsy Foundation Early Detection & Intervention Network reflecting the first time a US based hospital network has shown the age of cerebral palsy (CP) diagnosis can be lowered from approximately two-years of age to 9.5 months – leading to earlier intervention possibilities ..read more

It would be an understatement to say that the last few weeks have been unprecedentedly difficult. Some of you might feel hopeless, some fearful, and some defeated. However, it’s times like this that we must muster up our strength and forge forward. One of the most direct ways you can incite change is by voting both in the national and local elections —  this year, especially. Never has there been a time when it was so crucial to amplify our voice than now. Disabilities intersect all issues at center stage now, from racial disparities to equal access to healthcare, to fair and equal emplo ..read more

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JUNE 2020 Cerebral Palsy Foundation Early Detection & Intervention Network Lowers the Age of Cerebral Palsy Diagnosis to Less Than One Year New Hope for Families The May 2020 issue of PEDIATRICS the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, highlighted the results of the Cerebral Palsy Foundation Early Detection & Intervention Network reflecting the first time a US based hospital network has shown the age of cerebral palsy (CP) diagnosis can be lowered from approximately two-years of age to 9.5 months – leading to earlier intervention possibilities ..read more

My boyfriend and I had planned a beach vacation for mid-March a month in advance. We were still determined to go on the trip even as COVID-19 was trickling into America. At that time, the virus was relatively new, and no one seemed to know how it affected people, and if it only targeted those with preexisting conditions and the elderly. So, thinking that we were invincible, we packed our suitcases and hoped for the best. In the 48 hours before the flight, things started to change at the speed of light. The number of cases of the coronavirus across the county increased exponentially, and the W ..read more

I don’t know if this is just me, but my time in quarantine has made me have weird flashbacks to my childhood. As a kid growing up with CP, especially with a speech impediment and mobility limitations, my lifeline to making and keeping friends was through AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, for those of you who are too young to remember) and one of the first video chatting platforms, ooVoo. Fast forward 15 years, many of us are in a similar situation. To slow the spread of COVID-19, most of life has moved online, including friendships. In the early 2000s, I’d plant myself in front of the computer scre ..read more

One of the hardest moments during quarantine for me was when my apartment building announced its gym was closing to prevent the spread of coronavirus. As the outside gyms closed all around the city in the weeks prior, I felt grateful that the one in my building was open. The gym was the lasting lifeline to my sanity, and to have that yanked away from me, I felt lost. When I was apartment hunting two years ago, the realtor reassured me that although the studio unit was small, it wouldn’t matter that much since I would only come home to sleep, and the building had a bunch of amenities. Undoubte ..read more

Saturdays were special as a kid growing up in Port Washington, New York. Saturdays meant Burger King outings with my grandparents, a great big slice of trade-marked Hershey’s chocolate pie for me and piping hot oatmeal for them. And we can’t forget about the Kids Meal toys. But on this particular Saturday, everything was different – at the tender age of five, I started to notice that certain aspects of my life were just off. Precocious as I was, I was determined to be shown, not told. Who would have guessed that Burger King would be the place where I would have my first existential crisis bef ..read more