This series emerges from a quiet dialogue between my son, who lives with dyslexia, and myself—a mother shaped by similar sensitivities—following his encounter with a found deer antler.

My son found a deer antler in the forest. It was cold, dense, and unexpectedly heavy in his hands. A structure once grown for struggle, now shed and left behind. When he lifted it, I felt a quiet recognition.

He moves through the world in ways that do not always align with its expectations. I know that terrain. I have walked it for decades. Misunderstanding does not arrive as violence; it accumulates. It isolates. It teaches a child to measure himself against silence.

As he holds the antler, I see both strength and solitude in its form. It has grown under pressure. It will be shed. It will grow again. What he inherits will not be identical to what I carried. Still, I recognize the shape of it. The forest ahead of him is not mine to clear. I can only witness the moment he begins to carry something that will become his own.