Dear Healing Heart

You are not who you were. And maybe that's exactly who you need to be right now. In Dear Healing Heart: Reconnecting with Yourself While Caring for Your Child with Special Needs, Elizabeth Castillo shares the raw truth of parenting when life doesn't go as planned. Maybe it was a diagnosis you had to learn to pronounce-or something even harder to define. After years of moving nonstop to ensure her daughter had everything she needed, Castillo found herself longing for a way to process, reflect, and reconnect with herself. That longing led to this book, where she shares the tender, often unspoken moments of special-needs parenting and the quiet strength that emerges along the way. While the world expects you to stay strong and figure it all out, this book offers something different: a place to exhale. With compassion and hard-won insight, Castillo explores how to honor your feelings without being consumed by them, how to celebrate milestones that look different yet matter profoundly, and what acceptance truly means- not as a single moment, but an ongoing journey. This isn't about fixes. It's about you-the parent whose heart is aching and healing at the same time. Through grounding practices and honest reflection, this book invites you to reconnect with yourself amid it all. Above all, Dear Healing Heart offers permission to rest, to feel, to hope, to be imperfect, and to remember that your needs matter, too. For the parent who holds more than anyone sees-this letter is for you. At the end of each chapter, thoughtful prompts offer a quiet moment to pause - an invitation to reflect on your own journey, your own heart, your own story.