More Than One Good Road

Somewhere in high school the question starts arriving: what happens after? The culture answers with one picture: a packed car, a dormitory, an empty bedroom. This packet holds a bigger truth. There is more than one good road out of the school years. The road out: college, apprenticeship, service, work, a place of their own, with the family as the home base they choose to return to. The long runway: home for a while, on purpose, with community college, first jobs, savings, and time; most of our cultures never measured adulthood by the moving truck, and the runway is part of the flight. The shared home: living together as the chosen, built, meaningful arrangement, and for many families, including many with I/DD emerging adults, it is the road, and a whole one. The measure on every road is the same: how fully this particular person gets a say in their own days, whatever the address.