Hello, friend! Welcome to my little spot on the web. Here, you will find practical information about living a life touched by Autism. You will get to learn from my mistakes as well as my successes. The hope is that you will encounter fewer mistakes as a result.
When Autism entered my life I was a successful attorney planning to be a career Army officer. I was a happily married mother of three with the world at my feet. Then we got our diagnosis in 2010, and overnight our whole world changed. For the next four years my understanding of who I was and what my life was about dimmed as all of my hopes and most of my dreams were abandoned. I felt like we would have nothing but unmet expectations.
A tsunami swept through each and every corner of our life the day my son was diagnosed with Autism. It carried away all things familiar. What was left behind in its wake was a foreign landscape. We didn’t recognize our lives anymore or know how to navigate the new life we found ourselves living. In small ways we have reclaimed a semblance of our past life. Mostly we have changed. We have learned that what we face is a much bigger problem than is outwardly apparent. Managing an Autistic household is a daily challenge. Most days the medical and educational complications associated with the diagnosis appear to be insurmountable hurdles of grave importance, because your children’s future hangs in the balance.
Luckily, thankfully, blessedly, the difficulties we encounter are not the end of the story. They are just the beginning. Today I am a stay-at-home mom with a Masters in Special Education, a Prius V, and chickens on my 1.5 acre soon-to-be mini-farm. We haven’t “arrived” yet, but we are well on our way. I can’t, at present, proclaim Autism is a blessing, but I can say the life we are living in response to Autism has blessed us.
That is the journey I am on and what I want to share with you as one example of what is possible. We haven’t “arrived” yet, but we are well on our way and each day I do see that we are truly blessed to be living this journey together in our “little house” on the spectrum.