Programs

Hey friends — I wanted to share a story from my ongoing BestGuessistan series that’s been close to my heart lately.

Alex’s journey is about what happens when everything you knew unravels — career, relationships, identity. But in that raw, uncertain space, she finds permission to rethink what success and healing look like.

BestGuessistan isn’t a place you find on a map. It’s a state of being — a landscape for rewriting life after rupture.

In Alex’s story, ministries like the Ministry of Updated Expectations and places like Pain de Resistance Bakery become waypoints on a path that’s less about answers and more about gentle permission.

She learns to stop comparing herself to her old self and starts embracing the uncertainty of becoming — slow, tentative, and beautiful.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences about what it means to let go of “before” and start anew.

Here’s the full essay -

Navigating BestGuessistan

BestGuessistan isn’t a place you’ll find on any map. It’s not a place at all—strictly speaking. It’s a state of being, a shifting landscape where life after rupture unfolds. The familiar markers have vanished, replaced by ministries that don’t govern but guide; places named for the emotional work we all must do; spaces where healing follows no straight line.

The names may seem strange at first—The Ministry of Updated Expectations, Pain de Resistance Bakery, The It Dependsathon—but each holds a truth about the messy, unpredictable journey of rewriting a life.

Alex never planned to come here. She didn’t plan to go anywhere, though the urge to escape pulled at her like a tide. The place wasn’t on any map she’d seen—though she searched, endlessly. But everything had shifted beneath her feet. It was time for change.

Her decades-long career unraveled. Her wife left—without a clear explanation. Her bond with her kids thinned by distance and silence. Everything she counted on—her identity, her worth—crumbled. It started slowly but came crashing all at once. You know how that feels.

Leaving seemed like the only option. Staying to face the wreckage felt unbearable. Letting the rubble wait felt easier. Any shift, any change, even just a new backdrop, might ease the weight.

She found BestGuessistan in the cracks: graffiti on a toilet stall, a late-night search for hope, a place suspended between dream and waking. Was it real? Or the fog thickening?

She drifted in, soft-footed, unsure if she was arriving or fleeing. Questions swirled—dizzying, raw. Who am I now when everything that defined me is gone? What value remains—for myself, for those I love, for a world that feels alien? How to hold fractured past and uncertain present? Do I still matter? Who am I now, and does it matter to anyone?

The Ministry of Updated Expectations was her first surprise. Always open, it greeted her with a warm hush—rigid demands softened to loose threads. She didn’t know what to expect, but soon recognized what she’d found: permission. To revise her inner metrics; to rethink; to start fresh. She sampled programs and spaces, finding threads to reweave herself. It was a beginning.

At Pain de Resistance Bakery, the scent of fresh bread steadied her unsteady heart—a sweetness not just for nourishment but rebuilding. She wasn’t sure why it was named so; the place names all confused her. But she stayed. Emotional Logistics offered tiny stickers that whispered, “You showed up.” Strange, yet comforting. The It Dependsathon beckoned—a maze of maybe and uncertainty. Some days an austere Japanese hedge maze; others, a wild English garden. Paths as varied as her own journey.

Slowly, with effort and setbacks, she stopped measuring herself against her former self. She let go of the crushing weight of failure, a new, unwelcome companion since the fall. She discovered places that welcomed the after-version of Alex—not the old, but the becoming. That shift was not repellant but strangely magnetic. She felt herself loosen, but hadn’t fully embraced it.

Not yet.

Her journey wasn’t over. One last place awaited—off any map, unmarked, unguided. She arrived.

At the House of Blues—a spare room with worn wood and honest shadows—she lit a blue candle, mourning who she was and honoring who she might become. She picked up a battered guitar, unsure how to play, but the instrument showed her: how to experiment, rethink, play a blues progression. Folding a letter to her former self, she tucked it into the communal songbook—each note a reckoning, each silence a chance to listen.

Here, finally, Alex found space to breathe, reckon, and begin playing her own tentative, beautiful song.

And in the notes, chords, and budding melody, she glimpsed the faint shape of what might come next.

Thanks for reading and sharing this space with me.

What parts of Alex’s story resonated most with you?

For too long, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been placed in institutions, group homes, or left with few choices about where — and how — they live. But a growing movement is reimagining what “home” can mean, embracing independence, inclusion, and community.

Today, several innovative models offer people with disabilities more autonomy and a greater sense of belonging.

One such option is supportive housing. In this model, individuals live in their own apartments — either alone or with roommates — and receive customized support based on their needs. Support professionals may assist with daily living tasks such as cooking, cleaning, or transportation, while rent is often subsidized through HUD programs. www.hud.gov/hud-partners/multifamily-grants-section811ptl Supportive housing recognizes that people with disabilities can thrive independently when the right scaffolding is in place.

Another meaningful alternative is shared living, sometimes known as host home or life-sharing arrangements. In this model, a person with a disability lives with a carefully screened family or individual who welcomes them into their home. More than just providing support, this approach fosters genuine connection and a sense of family — something that can be difficult to replicate in more institutional settings. It also gives the person with a disability an opportunity to experience daily life within a household, with a natural rhythm and personal care.

Perhaps one of the most forward-thinking ideas gaining momentum is the concept of integrated, multigenerational communities. These communities are being designed where active adults over the age of 55 and independent adults with disabilities live side-by-side in a shared neighborhood. The goal? To create a mutually supportive, vibrant environment where aging adults and people with disabilities can enjoy friendships, mentorships, and mutual aid. One organization pioneering this concept is AbleLight, which envisions neighborhoods where inclusion is not an afterthought, but the foundation.

This type of integrated living model could reduce loneliness and isolation for both groups — offering community connection, increased safety, and the opportunity to build rich, interdependent relationships.

As we continue to look for better solutions, one truth becomes clear: housing is about more than just a roof overhead. It’s about dignity, choice, and community. And for people with intellectual disabilities, these new housing models are helping to make that a reality.

As the parent of an adult son with Down syndrome exploring these options can feel daunting. Even with a special needs trust it’s vitally important to document what kind of housing you want your loved one to live in. But the shift toward inclusion-based housing is growing — and with it, new hope for the kind of future all people deserve.

Creative Living Options

Adults With Disabilities

In discussions about the politics surrounding the care of disabled people, I see repeated references to the national debt and to the large numbers of undocumented people who are supposedly receiving Medicaid benefits through fraud. I hope to dispel some common misunderstandings surrounding these topics.

Chris Bucholz wrote an article for Cracked entitled “5 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Government Spending.” The first misconception that he corrects is the notion that governments are required to pay off their debts. Bucholz points out that when a private citizen retires, they are living off of their savings, investments, and whatever else they did to prepare. It is much harder to do that if the citizen owes money, so it behooves a person to retire debt free. Since governments in stable nations don’t retire, they can continue to accumulate debt indefinitely as long as the interest is paid. Bucholz says that most of the debt the American government accumulated in World War II is still there. If that debt was as serious a problem as politicians are fond of claiming, they would have fixed it in the eighty years that have passed since then. The reason they haven’t is that the misunderstanding creates a useful boogeyman when conservative politicians need to justify cutting programs they do not like. If you want more detailed information on this topic, Bucholz does an excellent job of laying it out in his article. For our purposes, the takeaway is that no one needs to be kicked off of any government program because the national debt is a problem. It isn’t.

Regarding Medicaid, I examined the eligibility requirements and the paperwork necessary to apply for benefits in my state. Those safeguards alone make it incredibly unlikely that we have massive numbers of undocumented people receiving unjustified benefits. By definition, undocumented people don’t have the documents needed to apply. Additionally, benefit systems in the United States are adversarial, in that the assumption is that the applicant is NOT eligible for benefits. The burden of proving otherwise lies with the applicant. While the specific requirements vary by state, my state requires the applicant to submit documentation proving that they are eligible for any one of the following reasons: low income; over 65 years of age; blind; otherwise disabled; have a dependent or family member in a care facility; pregnant. On top of all this, the applicant must supply a social security number. Undocumented folk don’t have those. In my state, it is virtually impossible for an undocumented person to obtain Medicaid benefits.

Medicaid is a complicated issue, because it is both state and federally funded, and some states offer benefits to eligible people regardless of immigration status. Snopes says that undocumented people in states that allow them to access healthcare benefits are not committing fraud. This tends to deflate the federal government’s argument that they are defeating “waste and abuse” by cutting funding to states that offer healthcare to undocumented people. Even if they were, it isn’t federal money that is being misappropriated. According to factcheck.org, states that cover undocumented people do so using state money only, as federal law prohibits disbursement of Medicaid funds to undocumented folk. The undocumented won’t be affected by these cuts; the President can’t withhold federal money from people who weren’t receiving it to begin with. Contrary to the Trump Administration’s claims that they are protecting Medicaid for deserving citizens, it is those citizens who will lose coverage when the cuts take effect.

When Donald Trump was banned from Twitter during the pandemic, COVID misinformation declined thirty six percent. Coupled with the more than fifty thousand lies he told during his first administration and the false assertions he has made regarding his cuts to Medicaid, it would be wise for those of us in the disabled community to take what the President says with a grain of salt regarding the “help” he is giving us. #Disability #MentalHealth #Depression #PTSD #Suicide #Trauma

Hi, my name is 1AnxiousScotsman. I am here seeking assistance because I am in an impossible situation and there is no assistance for me in my county. I live in Cass county ND, in Casselton ND, part of Cass county. The Cass county housing authority last year in November held a city meeting for the tenants of their buildings and told us that they filed for HUD vouchers for us in May (2024) that they were (and still are) selling the properties in Casselton to "consulidate their finances so they can build a 175 unit building and stack everyone in there so that it's easier to maintain one big place instead of multiple places scattered all over". They said we were supposed to be getting letters once HUD approved our vouchers and the housing authority would offer us moving assistance, pay our application fees, security deposits and provide us a reference, as well as a check based on the unit size, 1bdrm units with 1 in Household gets $700.00 check, 2 or more bedrooms with 2 or more in household get $1200.00 plus kids add $50.00 extra for each kid. We were told that we would "definitely receive our letters well before your annual lease renewal period in May" . Many of my neighbors and I have continued to ask the housing authority for updates but they have begun stone walling us. Our annual lease renewal has come and we had no choice but to renew it or face homelessness. None of my neighbors and I have received any type of correspondence about moving assistance approval, not received checks or vouchers. I'm starting to get truly scared because I have no friends, no family no supports and a dozen of my neighbors have given up and moved out but I cannot afford to, I do not own my own vehicle, I have two service animals, and I contacted 211 who told me the only disability advocacy agencies in Cass county are the three that quit working with me using an unfair excuse that because I live in Casselton it's to difficult to schedule adaquate time with their disability advocates around their other clients schedules so they stopped working with me. They are: community connect, community options, and recovery works LLC. Everyone knows the salvation army has billions of dollars but when I contacted them they asserted the claim that" they had no available funds to assist at this time". I contacted caothlic charities who told me " we don't have programs that support that far out of Fargo at this time". Casselton is a suburb of West Fargo but is 30 minutes outside West Fargo. It is part of Cass county which is North, south, East and West Fargo and parts of Morehead, as it was explained to me. I have filled out dozens of housing authority applications all over the US through the HUD website for public housing wait lists and only been placed on 5 though they are between 5-10 year waiting. Every day I wake up I'm terrified that this will be the day the housing authority knocks on my door and I become homeless. Loosing my service animals and belongings. I need help.

Hi.

I’ve been thinking about how to bring this up here because I am feeling a little alone in this mindset and I am not sure how others who don’t mention religion in posts feel.

I am not affiliated with any specific religion, I also am not an atheist. I didn’t grow up with religion in my home, but enjoyed learning about it. I went to catholic universities; not because they were catholic, but because they offered my programs and I liked the universities. When people say they will pray for me, I usually appreciate it. In my head, it’s similar to when I tell people I will think about them/hope for them. It shows that you are holding space in your head for another person- whether someone does a religious ritual or a personal one (loving kindness mantras are kind of what I do).

However, lately religion has been in the news a lot more. It’s hard when a religious majority in a country where religion is supposed to be separate from laws is trying to incorporate religion into public schools or making laws about my body. It’s hard when I need action but I am met with prayers. It’s hard when people tell me that God will have my back and things will work out when I know that a miracle isn’t going to happen and I have to take action. When unhoused, I did not become housed by praying; I became housed because I fought for my life and advocated for myself. Sometimes it’s hard to talk on here because of this.

It feels uncomfortable to post this because I may be in the minority here. I just really don’t know. Usually these comments don’t bother me, but I think the push of values like pro-life and religion in our public schools has been wearing on me. I also know there are people who have experienced religious trauma. I know that it makes me uncomfortable when I vent and I am met with people talking about a God I don’t necessarily connect with. I know that prayers are fine for me, but comments about things being in God’s hands are not helpful because I have had to fight for so much of my basic needs.

Again, this isn’t an anti-religion post. I am so glad that people have faith in and find comfort in religion. I’m curious, though, if anyone else has felt this way.

Thank you in advance!

#MentalHealth #Agoraphobia #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #PanicDisorder #ChronicVestibularMigraine #Migraine #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #PosturalOrthostaticTachycardiaSyndrome #ADHD

I've always loved being in the water. Being immersed in water helps my muscles relax and allows me to move my body in ways that are far more strenuous on land.

I've spent years doing various Aqua therapy programs, which have helped improve my mobility in many ways. One day, as I was staring out at a friend’s pool, admiring it, I decided I wanted to conquer the pool in a way I never had before – one hundred laps, there and back. I knew it would be a challenge and I could not accomplish such a feat on the first try, but that was okay. I had devoted the summer of 2013 to the challenge.

I committed to starting with five laps, there and back. I took a deep breath as I entered the water. I completed the five laps and kept going. Five turned into ten. Then ten turned into fifteen.

As I continued swimming, I assessed my body and pushed for just a few more laps. Exhausted, I made it to eighteen laps on my first swim of the season.

After reaching eighteen laps, I set a new goal of twenty-five. Again, I took to the water and swam with my whole heart. My goal came and went as I pushed myself harder. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine… forty laps! Once again, I had exceeded the goal I set for myself. I felt amazing.

My friends and family supported my goal by encouraging me to continue to push myself in healthy ways. They encouraged balanced nutrition, drinking plenty of water, and reapplying sunscreen as needed. They cheered me on throughout the process, giving me greater strength and determination to succeed in my goal.

As my journey to reach one hundred laps continued, I let go of everyone else’s opinions of how I should be swimming and listened to my body’s intuition as it guided me along each stroke of each lap. It didn't matter that I didn't use the "perfect form" or that I used multiple strokes to get to the end of the pool. Each lap built upon the last and I gained greater strength and stamina.

After months of practice the day arrived: I was finally going to conquer this goal. One lap after the last, in succession, I approached my goal with excitement. Ninety-eight… ninety-nine… one hundred!

What seemed to be an impossible goal not only became possible with great support and encouragement from people in my life, it was met with exhilaration that spilled over into each area of my life. I conquered the water and continue to conquer living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. #EhlersDanlosSyndrome

Limiting what I say to prevent triggering anyone as best as I can. I am more or less stuck in life. No mater how hard I try I can not get a job. I’ve tried for more than a decade now. I have limited support from family(mainly food and a roof) & was not put into highschool. As a kid (15-16) I tried getting my birth certificate from them so I could join programs to help me work but was told to wait until I finished highschool. I completed applications throughout that time on my own. When I was 20 or 21 they put me in online highschool with enough time left for me to pass only if I completed multiple years each year for half a year before stopping it after noticing I couldn’t do it unassisted even though they knew I needed assistance. They then proceeded to take me to get my ged however refused to take me for the final test 3/4 completed. I’ve repeatedly applied for the vast majority of jobs in my area and have been denied throughout this time. In my free time I primarily talked in support groups, peer to peer support chats, and the non emergency crisis chat to vent, hope to find some resource to help with the situation. I checked with all of the resources in my area to see if I was applicable and aparently I’m not. 28 going on 29, no work experience, money, reliable transportation. Majority of services in the area get denied due to household income. I’ve got my id, social security card, no birth certificate, no papers that mention my disability, a old phone with cell service.
General location: Middleburg Fl