I have known Sabine through her academic high school career. She works hard to make the grades and never settles for anything less. I knew her outside of school as well…..her love for gymnastics, her dream of working in her own cafe, and her obsession with BTS. Or so I thought.

Sabine and I have a special handshake. We have a special handshake because she is the best person in the world to play games with. She always has a game cued up. Sometimes she’ll school me with a deck of cards, or a new game on her phone, or heaven forbid, a dancing game on the console. .

I never thought my stomach would hurt so bad the next morning due to laughing. Me and Sabine were having a sleepover and we were making funny videos. Sabine and I were saying our inside jokes on the videos; no one else would understand why they were funny but us.

There aren’t very many things that Sabine and I have in common, but the one thing we always love to do together is go shopping. Two years ago, Sabine was invited to a prom by one of her friends at their high school and we had the really cool opportunity to go dress shopping. I took her to the mall and we went to a few places and I remember her trying one on in particular and loving it so much we had a little dance party in the dressing room.

One of the things I have learned to embrace because of who my daughter is, is simply to slow down a second and look around at where you are. I often have so many dots on my calendar that I should just assume that if I am awake there is somewhere else I am supposed to be. Sabine has, through who she is not any condition she may have, allowed me time to understand this philosophy in my own time

Stranger: (with hand on area that Sabine touched) “It’s totally ok! I REALLY needed that…”

This kept happening. At first, I thought Sabine was just touching everyone, but it turns out, she was being super selective! It’s like she knew; like she had this sense of who needed an extra loving touch.

The best moment of my life was when I went to Seattle for the Special Olympics National Games! I performed on the Texas Gymnastics team and at the end of the competition I had won 4 gold medals and 1 bronze.