Once upon a time there was a girl who thought what she was supposed to think. When she grew up, her daughter turned her world upside down.

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Throwing a birthday party for my little girl and her friends is not a complicated thing.

But this was not an ordinary girl. The most anticipated moment of any celebration should be the chocolate cake — but what if it becomes the most dreaded one? The birthday song surrounds everything, saturating the wood grain with each layer of coloured pencil, the sound grazing the ear. And it does not stop.

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When my instinct learned to listen to my child’s needs, I understood that different is not wrong. And in that understanding, I was reborn.