How does a developmental disability affect an individual throughout the course of life? What impact does the disability have on the individual's family? What strengths do families use to cope with these disabilities? What do they do that works? And, what doesn't work? These are the kinds of questions we have been asking individuals and families in our research over the past 15 years. This book was written to report their stories, and to honor these people who have shared their lives and their cries from the heart with us. It is both a positive book and a realistic book: full of love and grief and tenderness and anger and kindness and sorrow and courage. It is as real as the people who gave us the gift of their lives.