Ben through it all...: Our Story

Life is beautiful and challenging, and it's those challenges that make it beautiful. This blog was started when I was presented with one of those challenges. I started it when I had my son, Benjamin, who has Down syndrome. You can read about my inspiration to start blogging here if you are interested in knowing more, or here if you want to hear more about Benjamin's diagnosis.

My name is Jamie Renee Freeman. I am from Detroit, MI and I absolutely love my city! My husband, Mark, my son, Benjamin, and I live in a hundred year old historical home in Dearborn that I love and my husband hates (he has to do all the work on it!). I am a full-time mama, I have a full-time job as a trainer for a major technology company, and I am a full-time wife. There's a lot of full-time going on right now!

I have always been an open book for better or for worse. Putting myself out there is kind of a catharsis for me. This blog is my therapy, but it is more than that. When I was pregnant with Benjamin, my biggest source of peace was through reading the blogs of other Mama's who had a baby with that little extra 21st chromosome. I came across Pip and the Happy Soul Project blog through a google search, which led me to the amazing Down Syndrome community of brilliant families on Instagram. Seeing the faces of all those beautiful babies, and reading their parent's stories made me realize that having Ben was going to be nothing less than beautiful. Because of the inspiration and peace I found through everyone else's stories, I wanted to pay it forward and share my story. This, my friends, is Ben Through It All. I write about much more than just Ben here, but he is and always will be the center of my universe and it all comes back to him. Even the stories of my life before he came in to this world somehow seem to foreshadow his arrival.