I never heard of it. Well, I had heard the term coffee klatch, of course but I had never heard of TheCoffeeKlatch.com.

And then one day I got a notification – TheCoffeKlatch is now following you on Twitter.

Well, good for them. Who in the heck are they?

Wow!

How I wish I had known about them way back when my son was diagnosed with Autism. I’ve written before about how lonely it felt and how lost I was in new terms and services and therapies and other stuff. The Coffee Klatch would have really helped me. And Matthew.

On their About page, Marriane Russo writes,

“I want to give parents what I so dearly needed and did not have when I started on my journey, the empowerment of confidence and hope. It is our hope to bring you the tools to not only accept and understand your child’s diagnosis but to educate parents on special education law, digging out of the trenches and the true meaning of advocacy.”

And she does just that.

There is, of course, a blog on the site. But there is so much more. There are archives of interviews with everyone from my hero, Temple Grandin, to Jared Anderson of 100 Monkeys. There is an excellent Resources page, too. It looks like there is a lot more to come, too. I can’t wait!

And my favorite part? The radio show. I read a lot of websites and books and watch a lot of videos relating to Special Needs in one form or another. What I like about the radio show is that it adds a real sense of connection. I know behind all of the articles and all of the videos are real people but the radio show adds humanization – there are people out there. They are real. And they get it.

Check out the most recent episode with Temple Grandin here:

So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and wrap yourself in comfort – good information presented in a compassionate setting.