So we're giving the art away.
My wife Autumn is a Fragile X premutation carrier.
She didn't know. Her mother didn't know. Nobody in her family knew, going back as far as anyone could trace. We found out the way most families find out — after our son Shawn was already here, already showing signs, and already being told by specialist after specialist that there was nothing worth testing for.
We pushed. They tested. That's how we learned what we were carrying.
Here's the number that should have reached us years earlier: roughly 1 in 151 women carries the Fragile X premutation. That's more common than most conditions you've been screened for. It's the leading known inherited cause of intellectual disability. And the overwhelming majority of carriers have no idea.
Not because the test is hard. Because nobody told them to ask.
All Fragile What art is free to use. Credit us, or just say the name: Fragile X.
Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 — so the name becomes common knowledge.
You can use it. Print it, post it, put it on a shirt, a banner, a flyer, a fundraiser, a classroom wall.
You can change it. Crop it, recolor it, translate it, remix it into something we never thought of.
The one thing we ask
Name it.
That's the whole deal. Free to use. Name the mission.
Not because we need the exposure. Because the credit line contains the words "Fragile X," and somebody reading it is going to search that phrase for the first time in their life. That search is the entire point. Every time this art gets used with its name attached, one more person types those words into a box and finds out what they mean.
The art is the delivery system. The name is the payload.
What we kept
One thing isn't included: our brand.
"Fragile What?" — the name, the logo, the taglines — stays ours. Those are trademarks, and trademarks don't travel with a Creative Commons license.
If you're reading this and something landed
If you're a woman with a family history of intellectual disability, autism, early menopause, fertility struggles, or tremor and balance problems in older relatives — ask your doctor about FMR1 testing. Ask by name. Ask even if they wave it off, because ours did.
Autumn asked. We got an answer. That answer changed how we understand our whole family, in both directions.
