Sharon Dzialo has been a teacher, a counselor, a wife, and a mother of two children.  She began her professional career as a high school English teacher and after five years pursued the necessary graduate training to be a counselor.  She had a long and fulfilling career in the same high school for 20 years. It was toward the end of this career that her twelve-year-old son, Adam, enrolled in a summer camp, experienced a severe brain injury as a result of a near-drowning.  At that point she took on the new role of “extreme caregiver,” a role she had unwittingly been preparing for her entire life.  
     
Sharon began writing this book about five years ago, one story at a time, believing that her family had undertaken a unique quest and that the telling of it might inspire others and help her integrate all of the experiences and lessons learned along the way.  It all started on the very first day of her son’s accident, when she became a student of trauma. Understanding the nature of healing was to be her new critical life task.   It was a journey fraught with the unimaginable.

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The entire Dzialo family was deeply impacted by Adam's near-drowning. They  continue to allow new healing experiences into their life, working through fear when it rears its ugly head.  Adam is now 24 years old, effusively happy and subtly irreverent. He tolerates hours of labor-intensive therapy daily, is surrounded by exquisite nature, and enjoys endless hours of movies, new and old.    

Sharon’s daughter, Aimee, has emerged from their rural hometown to become a CPA, working as a senior associate in a large Boston accounting firm with a specialty in corporate taxation. She lives outside of Boston with Tiki, her loving and faithful canine companion.

Sharon’s husband, Philip, is a retired high school principal who has advocated diligently and tirelessly for services and programs for Adam.  He engaged in litigation against the state of Massachusetts and ultimately gained a formal apology through mediation from the college who sponsored the summer camp.

The Dzialo family has relocated to Cape Cod, where they live on a pond near the ocean, a simple walk to a lively downtown. They have two wonderful dogs: a wise old Chihuahua, Chloe, and the newest addition, a poochon named Ollie.  Adam's therapies remain on the forefront of each day, but without the complications and stresses of their former life in Western Massachusetts.  This family lives a life of intense commitment, and they are learning about the art of contentment.