Andrew
was born to his father, Leonard Smith, and me on June 11, 1981 and taken
from us on February 12, 1997. He was a passenger, just coming home with
a friend from a basketball game at school. The “friend”, a
seventeen-year-old student with some very serious learning disabilities
(that I found out about later) was given the keys to the family’s
top-heavy, four-wheel drive car by his parents. He had three
previous speeding tickets (also something I found about later), and was
put behind the wheel of a vehicle requiring skill to operate even by an
adult.
The driver was speeding,
passing on a double yellow line, into a curve. To get back into
the proper lane, he had to over-correct. The vehicle lost its
center and rolled three times. Neither young man had their seat
belt on. The driver survived. Andrew did not.
I spent many months
buried deep in a black hole of grief. It took an enormous amount
of effort from family and friends to pull me out inch by inch. It
took every shred of my internal resources and strength to hold my arms
up so I could be pulled out. Out of this grief came my soul’s
work, work that would honor Andrew and keep his spirit alive.
I began this work by telling Andrew’s story. Stories about
his personal growth, life lessons he learned, stories that would inspire
people to reach out for help in their own lives to make their lives
richer and happier.
Andrew was diagnosed at
an early age with the “disease of the 80’s”, Attention Deficit
Disorder. This “disease” is now at epidemic proportions with
significant controversy regarding over-diagnosing and treatment. I
elected not to pursue administering Ritalin and instead searched for
more holistic methods of helping Andrew.
This web site is about
those methods, resources and support I found (not easily I might add)
that helped Andrew achieve a joyful, productive life. Had I found
these resources sooner, I could have prevented Andrew years of
frustration from a school system that had no idea how to teach him and
parents from struggling to find solutions and mistakenly expecting him
to “just do it”.
The
story of Andrew's Institute continued...
