Guest Author: Sabrina Shiver

Parenting a child diagnosed with level three autism and an intellectual disability has given me an education I could never have received from a textbook. It has taught me how to advocate, navigate complex systems, communicate with professionals, and build a team. It has also taught me how to sit with hard moments long enough to find the lessons within them.

One of the ways I make meaning from those experiences is by sharing them.

Strategic sharing allows our lived experiences to become a source of connection, hope, and learning for others. But effective strategic sharing requires more than simply telling our stories. It requires intention, boundaries, a learner stance, and attention to emotional safety.

Sharing With Purpose

During difficult seasons, I often journal and reflect. Once I have enough distance from an experience, I can ask myself: What did I learn? How did I grow? What can I take from this experience?

Sometimes those lessons can help another parent. I may be able to share a resource, help someone navigate a system, or simply sit beside a parent who is having a hard day. There is value in being able to say, I may not know exactly how you feel, but I understand that this is hard, and you don’t have to sit here alone.

Sharing can also offer hope. When a parent is facing something my family has already navigated, I can share what I learned or how circumstances changed for us. That doesn’t guarantee the same outcome for their family. It simply reminds them that today’s circumstances do not necessarily determine tomorrow’s possibilities.

This is where maintaining a learner stance becomes essential. Our lived experience gives us valuable knowledge, but it does not make us the expert on another family’s experience. Even when our stories appear similar, their feelings, values, priorities, and desired outcomes may be different.

Strategic sharing should create space for someone’s story, not compete with it.

Boundaries Are Part of Caring

Having a story does not mean I have to tell all of it. Before sharing, it can be helpful to ask:

  • Why am I sharing? Is it intended to support the family or meet a need of my own?
  • Is it relevant? Does my experience connect to what is happening right now?
  • Am I ready? Can I share without needing the person I am supporting to take care of me?
  • Is it mine to share? My experience belongs to me, but other people’s details may not.
  • Where does the conversation go next? Does my sharing bring the focus back to the family?

There are experiences I choose not to share because they are still too raw. If I am still processing an experience, sharing it in a helping relationship can shift the emotional responsibility to the person I intended to support.

Knowing when not to share is part of strategic sharing too.

Protecting Emotional Safety

Using lived experience professionally also requires recognizing that telling our stories can affect us.

Before sharing, I can consider what might trigger me and what boundaries I need. During the conversation, I can pay attention to changes in my emotions or body. I can pause, breathe, redirect, leave out details, or decide not to continue.

After sharing, we should check in with ourselves and recognize when additional support is needed. Support can be layered and might include reflective supervision, trusted personal relationships while maintaining confidentiality, clinical support, or faith-based support when appropriate.

Parenting a child with complex needs has given me some of my hardest moments, but those moments have also taught me resilience, advocacy, patience, and hope. I can allow what I have learned to serve someone else without giving away every part of myself in the process.

I don’t have to share every painful detail for my story to have value.

Sharing is caring when our experiences help someone feel seen, supported, or hopeful. Strategic sharing takes that one step further: it asks us to care enough about ourselves and others to know why to share, what to share, when to share, and when not to share at all.

About the Author:
Sabrina Shivar combines professional expertise with lived experience to support children, families, and the professionals who serve them. She is an Implementation Specialist with the North Carolina High Fidelity Wraparound Training Program, a National Certified Family Peer Specialist, founder of Our Haven of Hope, and owner of Grit and Grace Coaching . Sabrina is passionate about family voice, disability inclusion, faith, and creating spaces where lived experience leads to meaningful connection and change.