We’re the Heffner Family – Drew, Trista, Allayna, and David – and welcome to our hurricane!

We decided to start this blog as a means of sharing, learning, teaching, advocating, and enlightening any and all that visit our page to the joys, concerns, failures, and triumphs that are all significant parts of our family’s experience as we navigate an ever-changing and fast-moving world.

Our son David is 7 years old, and was diagnosed as moderately autistic at age 5.
Even before his diagnosis our world was constantly evolving, as we traversed the family court system for 8 years in efforts to secure physical placement, protections, and finally adoption for our daughter Allayna, now 16. Allayna is biologically mine (Drew), and my wife (Trista) has adopted her as of September of 2018.

We thought that post-adoption our world would start to calm down, and in many ways it did; until our son was recommended for evaluation to be placed on the Autism Spectrum, and subsequently diagnosed.
Since then we traded court dates and home visits for service hearings and therapies, appointments and IEP meetings. It can be dizzying at times, but both of our children are wonderful people regardless of what has stood in their way; so we wanted to find a way to share our story with you, and thought “Hurricane Heffners” was as fitting for our story as anything!

Along the way we intend to share stories, anecdotes, we will (all) advocate fervently for David, and all of those with Autism and other Special Needs. We will try to enlighten, encourage, and educate all who visit our page to the need that people with Special Needs have for not only awareness, but even more importantly acceptance and understanding. We know they are not the same thing, and we know without uncertainty that all are equally important.

So thank you for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy your time in our story, and we hope that you take with you a little less of your own troubles and a little more hope in this whirlwind world we live in!

All Our Love,
The Heffner Family – Drew, Trista, Allayna, and David