Order

Most of you know this about me.  But I have a very very very hard time getting the motivation to clean.  It’s this weird mental block that would only be described as poorly firing neurons in my brain.  Because it’s one of those brick walls I hit all the time.

Now that I’m feeling all these feelings.  Now that I’m back to having outrageous emotions that aren’t being numbed by drugs….I need to get things going with my life.  I NEED to take charge.

A lot of people say “who cares if you’re house isn’t clean?”.  Part of me doesn’t think it’s so trivial at all.  When you’re living in mayhem you act like it, you don’t LIVE when you can’t use your space for what it is for.  Living in disorder creates MORE disorder.  I will not cook a healthy meal if my kitchen is dirty.  I will not put a exercise  video on if my floor is a mess.

A disorderly world seems like the beginnings of an unhappy world.

And it’s all a cycle.  I’m not healthy because my home isn’t healthy and my home isn’t healthy because I am not healthy.

It’s a problem.

I keep wondering WHEN I will learn from my lessons.  It’s not like I don’t know what I am doing to myself.  I absolutely KNOW that I create a harder life than I need to.  By being “lazy” I am making my life worse.  It is HARDER to live the way I do.

It’s harder to live the way I do.

I don’t have problems living in the moment.  It’s all I do.  What future?  I don’t think much about how my actions will effect the next hour.  Not in every way…but in a lot of ways.

I think that from order, will come some significant change.  I know it’s not what happy means…

I just feel like I need a point to start….I don’t know how to tackle a mountain that’s this big.  It’s monstrous and one path brings you back to where you came from.  You can’t tell which one to start at.

I forgot that this is how it feels to be un-medicated.  I’m kind of going crazy today.  So is Isaac actually….

GIVEAWAY!!!!!

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Feeling Feelings

I’ve cried a lot today.

I woke up in a fog of SSRI withdrawal, I had slept in too long and it was time to feed the kids FAST and get out the door for swimming lessons.  I managed to do it, despite the fog and the rush, we got there only 3 minutes late.  Phew.

After lessons we have a ritual, as we do with everything.  I skipped over the first ritual of where we come out of the family change room and the boys sit in the lockers.  It was hot.  Too hot.

I avoid the woman’s change room at all costs, we end the same time the aquasize classes do. I just don’t think Silas, with photogenic memory, wants the image of showering with 6 or so naked 50+ women in his memory bank.  Just sayin.

We went to the playhouse which is step 2 in the after swimming lessons ritual.  The kids played with another little girl as I gave the count-down.  Every minute must be counted as we prepare to transition.  Silas must know everything that is about to happen or he cannot handle it.  ESPECIALLY moving from a desirable activity to a not-so-fun one.

We got to zero, Isaac got his jacket on first and rushed to the door to push the button (ritual#3).  Silas, hating not being first, slipped from my hands and ran after him.  I tried to pack up quickly and get there before too much of a problem happened.  I heard Ikey make an unhappy sound and I rushed over.  Silas had him by the hood of his raincoat and dragged him to the ground.  “NO NO NO NO I cried, seeing my little baby about to get hurt…again”.

I stopped it and got us out there as fast as we possibly could.  The old woman was glaring at me.  A woman who looks in charge of something important at the pool came rushing out of her office, looking concerned.  The young woman at the desk…they were all watching and wondering what sort of mother….

I let Isaac go ahead as I held Silas back, teaching him a lesson about hurting his brother.  Silas hates it when he’s not first.  It’s become a massive problem in our home and I’m not too sure how to deal with it.  He was SO angry with me.

Isaac got in to the car first and I tried to hold on to Silas while I got all of our things in to the car but he slipped away from me, hurting Isaac again.

Another woman watching….hearing me sound angry with my kids.  The lady who screams at her child to listen to the teacher during swimming lessons drives by in her car…all watching.

I dunno what I was doing.  What I was trying to prove to my son.  He just simply cannot be so upset by not being first.  He needs to learn, I am in over my head with this lesson.  It got Isaac hurt…again.

As I was trying to keep Silas OUT of the car and buckle Isaac in at the same time, I just crouched down to the ground and I cried.  I ugly cried.  In the parking lot.

Silas’ angry tears turned into sadness.  Both boys asked me to stop crying but I couldn’t.  It snapped Silas out of his state enough to get everyone buckled up safely.

I cried all the way home with the boys eerily silent in their seats.

I somehow thought that I got something through to them but once we arrived home, their shenanigans started once again and I absolutely lost it.

Silas and I in his room, me trying to drill ideas into his head that he just. cannot. grasp.  It’s not his fault but drive them I tried.  I tried until I was exhausted and guilty.  He kept telling me he didn’t want to be a nice boy, that he liked to be a mean boy.  I told him he was a wonderful boy, he’s nice, he’s smart, he’s beautiful.  I just didn’t need to yell it so loudly.

Then we did what we do best.  We snuggled.

I think our snuggles could solve world hunger.

After he told me I shouldn’t yell because I might cough.  He was right, he usually is right.

Getting off these SSRI’s have been more emotional that I thought possible.  Feelings feel….they FEEL like something.  It’s not just a painful general yucky feeling.  They’re sharp, they’re heightened.  They’re so real to me.  They’re waking up after being numbed down after two years and they HURT.  Oh boy do they hurt.

I feel…alive.

I sat, tissue ready, and had to wipe tears before even starting to read THIS POST.  One that I recommend you reading.  This woman and I have not met *yet* but we have so much in common.  I love how she can describe her feelings so well.  Her and I have both felt more pain for our children than any one mother should be have to feel.  She’s just as honest as I am but a way better writer.  It’s refreshing.

I bawled my way through her post, describing her feelings surrounding the birth, and the following four weeks after, of her son Amos.  A delicious little boy who has Down Syndrome.  What a lucky mommy she is.  What a lucky boy.  She must let me chew on him soon.

I’m so full of raw emotion and even though it may be HARD emotion, it’s so good.  It’s like after the rain has poured down and the sun is peeking through the clouds.  Not only are those emotions more vivid but so are the feelings that follow, the endorphins, the ups…the HIGHS.

Today, despite the fact that the feelings are hard ones, I’m just embracing them.  I’m enjoying feeling human.

Einstein Knew his S#it

Since coming off these drugs, I feel a bit pressured to take more control of my life, to make my own happiness, to live up to my potential.  To not let my brain take me down again.

I don’t talk about this terribly much, partially because I’ve never gone and gotten a real, live diagnosis for it….I hear everyone say that they think they have ADD which is kind of offensive to me.  I am CERTAIN I have it.

How do I know?  Well I’ve had professionals tell me, I have almost all of the symptoms…not like every once in a while but on a minute to minute basis.  I also found online one of the diagnostic tests they use and I had everyone I know take it.  The lower the # the less likely you have ADD.  My husband got 8, my mom and one sister got 13, my stepdad got 30….I got 175.  Maybe there’s a problem?

I also began bawling my eyes out after reading the first page of You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?  An amazing book that was written for people just like me.  I’ve had a hard time finishing it though.

Of course I grew up with teachers being frustrated with me, telling my mom they think I have ADD.  Always having the “Leah needs to apply herself more” or the “Leah needs to stay on task” written in the comment section of my report cards.

A lot of people people think that we’re over-diagnosing ADD, autism too.  Seems like everyone has it.

Maybe the fact that all these people aren’t succeeding in school might show that there is something very backwards about how we are teaching our kids.

I’m 28 now.  Stick me in a desk and try to have me learn something and you’re going to get the 12-year-old Leah.  You’ll lose me in less than 10 minutes and have a hard time getting me back.

This just isn’t how I learn.  I am not capable of focusing on a teacher for a very long time unless I am incredibly interested in what they have to say.  I completely focused during the Autism Biennial….but….I was being spoken to by many of the greats.  Some did lose my attention…I was exhausted from being so darn attentive.  But autism is my thing.

This quote I came across recently has struck me in a VERY large way.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
-Einstein

I am smart, but if you’re going to grade me after making me sit in a desk all day, we’re both going to think I am stupid.  In fact I still believe I can’t succeed at school.  I still believe I’m not smart enough to do a math class.  I still believe that I am lazy.  I still believe that I’m not a good person because I don’t live up to the same standards as everyone else.

This fish can’t climb trees…I’m sorry.

Part of me wants to go get a degree in education, buy one of the many schools around here that have been shut down by our fantastic government and start a school for the Lazy, Stupid and Crazy people. 

If I had only had a school like the one in my head, where the teacher understood that they would first need to tackle my massive sensory issues happening inside my body before they could get me to do anything else.  A school that is one with nature.  A school where we learn by using what we are interested in.  I would have learned math was easier if I was taught using real, live baby chickens .

Lets put a big dirt pile in the school yard and have a bunch of buckets and shovels.  Let me hold a bunny while you teach me my fractions, see how much better I relax and focus.  Make things hands on.  Teach me something that I find applicable to my life NOW, people have a hard time learning things that aren’t relevant to them.

Lets recognize the kids that fail miserably when they have a big project to do, lets break it down in to little steps for them so they see it as something they can accomplish rather than a big mountain to climb.  maybe if I was taught that I wouldn’t see mountains in front of me everywhere I go.

I have really no idea what I am going on about.

I struggle….every day.  It’s not something where you can say to me “if you just DID it, you’d see”  or “why don’t you just…”.  It’s easy to say that.  NEVER say that to a child.  “why can’t you just….?”.  I think that phrase ruined me.

Why couldn’t I anyway?  I couldn’t ever answer you….I was obviously broken.

It’s one of those self-fulfilling prophesies.  You tell me I’m something as a child, I’m going to believe you to a point where I make it true.

Ah, that was a rant…anyway…

Beyond that, I do feel like there is a way that I can manage and cope better.  I KNOW what to do…I just need to do it.  I think most of my depression issues stem from how my brain works and how I feel about myself when I’m constantly running in to brick walls.

Brick walls are what I call the things in the brain, the things that stop me from doing the things that would make my life a hell of a lot easier.  Like…you know…keeping the kitchen clean.  Maybe that’s just my interpretation of my brain trying to make connections and then failing at it.  I hit brick walls all the time.

My husband and a friend were once describing how they access information in their brains.  They have it all filed away in a systematic way where they would actually go looking for the file, open it and know what the heck they wanted to know.  Perhaps not that perfect but close.

Mine is more like a whirlpool….a big whirlpool full of slush, debris, scrambled eggs and spaghetti.  I have to will whatever information I want to come to the surface and snatch it out of there before it gets sucked back down.  In other words…mayhem, disorder, anarchy.  Leah’s brain.

That’s only a small part of it though, I kinda really adore the way I think.  I just don’t adore how I get my thoughts to actions.  My maelstrom in my brain helps me to think clearly where a lot of others don’t.

So what I’m really getting at….is that I’m feeling pressure to get to action.  Action is an overwhelming thing for me.  It means getting up and doing what I don’t feel like doing.  Guess how many times I do something I don’t feel like doing?  Not often…hardly ever.  Course that’s outside of like…feeding and caring for my children…

I remember my mom, red in the face, stricken with absolute frustration saying to me “YOU JUST NEVER DO ANYTHING YOU DONT FEEL LIKE DOING!”.

It’s true.  It’s SO true.  She was right.  I don’t feel like doing anything else than what I am doing right now.  I don’t care about the end result.  No matter how many times I do my dishes and say to myself “I like doing dishes” or “wow this was so much faster and easier than I thought it would be”….I don’t learn.  It’s always something I don’t feel like doing…so I don’t.

I read somewhere that said something along these lines:

It is 100 times harder for someone with ADD to complete an undesirable task than someone with a neurotypical brain.  It is like climbing a mountain every single time.

It’s a good way to describe it…I don’t get how you people get all that stuff done.  I really don’t get it.  I wish I did.  I wish with all my heart that I was like all you people out there.  I know all of you can somehow relate to me…we all have our good days and bad days.  I’d give a million bucks for someone to come and smash down my brick walls.

I don’t like thinking that I hide behind having a self diagnosed perhaps total not mental…mental condition.  I hardly ever think about it.  I just view myself as a Leah who hasn’t figured it all out yet.  I need to figure it out soon though.

I feel like there are big things out there for me.  I can see myself doing many many many great things with my life.  I see a Leah inside of me that hasn’t come out yet.  If I didn’t hit a brick wall every time I had to put my thoughts to action then I would be a mighty force to be reckoned with.  So watch out!!!

I need to come up with a plan, though.  Gretchen Rubin beat me to an idea…I really have been wanting to start a blog to journal my active search to find what makes me happy.  I was going to then put it all in a book and go be on Oprah…but whatever Gretchen…you can have it for now.  The difference between us is that she kinda had it all to begin with…she wasn’t depressed…she just enhanced her life.  I’m still reading her book for inspiration though.  I’d like to have my own website on my own happiness project.  At first I didn’t want to get to the 20 year mark of living with depression but now that has come and gone…maybe I can be happy by age 30?  I have two years to become happy Leah.  It might just work.

Anyway, I have NO idea my intention behind this blog today.  Could have just been that I’m enjoying my time with my bird and my dog on the couch and it’s warm and I don’t want it to stop.  Sitting just so happens to be my very favourite activity.

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  I just responded to an email and it just seems as though I’m just blathering on about stuff today.  I’ll stop now.

In a Fog

Oh psychostemic drugs.  You don’t like being told to go.

I’m on day two of cutting my Cipralex down to 1/4 and taking one every other day.  Day 2 is where I feel super foggy and able to cry on command.  This is definitely a journey.

Those crazy tingles that go shooting through my body, my numb lips, a bit of nausea.  It’s not the worst withdrawal I’ve been through but it’s not very fun either.  I’m pressing on hoping to come out the other end alive and well.

When my sweet little Silas was diagnosed with autism, I didn’t take the news so well.  My brain wasn’t too fond on the extreme stress and things shut down.  You know those wonderful endorphines you get when you go for a jog, hold a baby, feed the homeless?  Those hormones weren’t being made I don’t think because NOTHING would make me feel any better…at all.  It sucked.

I went on to cipralex and that is exactly what it helped.  It also helped me not get so down on myself about things which is something I realized today…as I was getting way hella down on myself about stuff.  First I’m not a good wife…then I’m a horrible mother and before you know it I’m the worst person on the planet and a waste of air.  I love the spiraling self talk…NOT handy.

What is the best about all of this is that I’m experiencing MORE highs.  I’d rather feel some sadness if I can feel some higher amounts of happy that go along with it.  I guess we call that…passion?

Anyway….I’m so tired right now and I feel like there’s a dark blanket on my brain.

I don’t really know how I’m going to ever get it all together enough to be a happy, spunky Leah.  I know she’s in there.  Somewhere.

Water. Walking. Fish oils.

Could someone please tell the little cipralex elves to stop shocking me with their little mini stun guns…it feels tooooo weird.

PS I’ve fallen madly in love with this blogger.  She’s a SWEET mommy, she thinks outside the box and maybe she DOES have it all right.  Demand Euphoria?

Our Autism Story Part III

It’s been a long time since writing about our story.  You can find part I and II up top under “Silas’ Story”.

Time went on and Silas’ few words that he had started speaking never turned in to more words.  I kept waiting for him to talk to me but it just wasn’t happening.

When his little brother, Isaac, came along, I was astonished at how different he was.  Isaac was talking to me, cooing and wiggling and looking at me in the eye.  What a different child I thought.

Silas started showing signs of being someone incredibly smart.  He first learned all the animal sounds, then he quickly learned his colours, then shapes, then it snowballed from there.  He picked up things so quickly, it was so easy to teach him anything.

My mind is really quite blank about the next year.  Silas was just going along, not talking, not really doing anything kids his age were.  We had found out that he had a peanut allergy and our world was rocked.  I was in absolute despair about it.  I cried and cried and asked God why.  It was awful.  My little boy could die from something as simple as a peanut!

I remember being quite the hermit.  We had moved in to our first home that we could call our own.  Silas had his second birthday in this house and we are still here.  Looking back at the blogs I wrote at that time, it’s so obvious he had autism.  He just wasn’t talking well.  He was echoing everything I said.  He was telling strangers that he loved them, spinning things constantly…still.

He would sit in front of our front loading washing machine (he called it a water fan) and have his breakfast while it spinned.  I got a lot of laundry done.

I was in the fog of being a mom of two children…two babies practically.  I noticed things about Silas that were so off but he would SNUGGLE!!  I had my facts wrong.  He snuggled me and I thought kids with autism never ever did that.

I was also scared that if I went online and looked it up, I would freak myself out about nothing.  Jenny McCarthy had just come out with her story on Oprah about how she “cured” her son’s autism.  I understood some of what she was saying but it all didn’t fit.  Autism just remained at the back of my mind.  My son was definitely delayed, we had definitely different but so was I when I grew up.

Finally, as I was on the phone with my sister Jill, telling her about how many tantrums Silas was having all the time she told me I should go to the doctor to just see if anything is up.  She meant something physical but I know there was something else in her voice.  It was finally someone I trusted, telling me that they also noticed something different about my son.

On to the computer I went.  I typed in “autism symptoms” and as I was reading I burst in to tears.  It was time to call the doctor.

I took Silas to my GP very shortly after.  Thinking ahead, I brought along his very favourite toy.  Something he called his “spinny toy”.  I guess it just had a good spin to it and he loved it to pieces.

After examining him and saying nothing seems to be physically wrong, he maintained that he didn’t think Silas had autism.  Then I passed Silas his spinny toy and the doctor changed his mind.  He didn’t like the way Silas looked at it, something was “off”.  Time to go to the pediatrician.

Silas performed great for the pediatrician.  Upon going in he dumped out a bunch of lego and started lining them up.

It was a hard conversation with that man.  I didn’t want the power of suggestion to have him misdiagnose my son with autism.  I told him I saw red flags and I just wasn’t sure what to think.  He finally just made me say it “what do you think is going on with your child?”.

“I think he has autism.”

I was right.  The man went on to say that he was sure Silas had autism.  He handed me a box of tissue and began telling me all of the things he saw in my son after 5 minutes of being around him.  Symptoms I didn’t even know about.  I didn’t cry, I didn’t need those tissues.  I told him I was expecting it.  No problem, lets just deal with this.

After filling out NUMEROUS forms I was sent on my way with almost a new person in tow.  It didn’t feel like Silas anymore.  I kept seeing this new disorder, noticing all the things I didn’t see before.

An old friend of mine works in that building.  I’m the kind of person who needs people.  I need to talk, I need to share, I need people around me with anything.  I went to her office and walked in the door.  She looked up to me to say hi and I burst in to tears.

“Silas has autism.”

I don’t know how long I was in that room with her for, or how I managed to get home.  I do remember picking up Isaac from Leanne’s house.  Her mom was there watching Lucas and was nice enough to watch Isaac too.  I cried to her as well.  I cried and I cried and I cried.  When I got home I laid down on my kitchen floor, face first in to the cold wood and I screamed my face off.  I screamed until my throat hurt.  I screamed until my tears were dry.  Until my head pounded.

I remember my mom telling me about a friend of her’s who lost her daughter in a car accident.  She told my mom she would wake up feeling peaceful for a short short moment and then the rush of the pain and reality would come back and stab her.  I knew what that felt like now.  That was the hardest time of my life.

More to come….

My Neuro-typical

I often feel guilty that I don’t write as much about my sweet little Isaac as I do about my Silas.  I guess that’s because I don’t really need to raise awareness about neuro-typicals and find support networks.

Although, sometimes having an NT son is harder than one with autism.  But only sometimes.

Right now I’m sitting on the couch, still protecting my dog from when he decided it would be fun to scare her.  I still have a half moon stuck to my forehead cuz he said he wanted it there.  There’s lego all over the table and he’s found his way upstairs to watch a few clips of Pocoyo on YouTube.

He’s got a lot to say these days.  Like yesterday he said “Mommy, if you poop….you poop!” very matter-of-fact.  I’m getting what I was so sad about missing with Silas.  All the Kids Say the Darndest Things moments.  Although Silas makes me laugh sometimes too.  Especially when he takes a look at a cracker he’s eating and says “Mommy!!! It’s the shape of Nebraska!!!”.  Oh dear Silas.  Such a different world autism is.

Isaac is coming up to being 4 years old.  He still gets mistaken for a 2 year old now and then.  He’s my little teenie weenie boy and I love it.  I bought him a shirt for my sister’s wedding yesterday and I had to buy him a 3T…and it’s still rather roomie on him.  They have a chart of all the kid’s heights in the class and Isaac comes in a good inch shorter than everyone else.

We were kinda hoping he’d get the height from my family and Brent’s amazing sports skills….I can’t see the height happening.  But it’s super duper cute for now.  He looks nothing like a 4 year old.  Maybe I got confused and skipped a year?  Nope.  He’s near 4.

He sure is a sweet little guy.  I think my massive amounts of affection that I dote upon my children is rubbing off on him.  He tells me he loves me ALL the time and I get kisses whenever I want them…for the most part.  The other day in the car, after hearing me say “I love you”, he said “I love you too sweetie huns”.  He’s coming up with pet names!  They get called about 20 different pet names within a day.

What can I say?  I’m a lovey kinda gal!

Neither of my kids have been the full of energy type.  Hardly any bouncing off the walls here.  I fear, though, that Isaac is getting more energy every single day.  More energy and more need for attention.  He demands attention and will pester me relentlessly until I give it to him.  I love that he wants to be with me.  Unfortunately I find playing cars incredibly boring.  Fortunately he’s still up for tea parties and dr visits with his dolly.  That I can do.

As much as I don’t write about him, I’m incredibly involved with him.  We have a LOT of alone time together and he gets to go out and have LOTS of hot chocolate with me.  The ladies at the nearby starbucks know that I want my grande dark roast in a venti cup and that his half-sweet-no-whip hot chocolate isn’t acceptable without a happy face written in chocolate on top.  They’ve gotten really good at that happy face.

He gets to eat things that would never be allowed in our peanut free house.  Not peanuts of course but may contains galore.  Cake pops from Starbucks are one of his favourites.  He’s just the kinda kid you want to buy a big doughnut and watch him eat it because it’s so cute.  I think my father thought that of me when he bought me things like that.

I’m also very on top of things when his brother shows aggression towards him.  Sometimes it’s sickens me how awful it looks.  I feel guilty that he cannot always be protected even in our own home.  But, I tell Isaac everything he needs to know to keep up that self esteem of his.  It’s NOT ok for anyone to hit you, you are a special boy and you don’t deserve that.  He usually responds, through tears, “yes I am very very special”.  I have him confront Silas on it and tell him that it was not ok to do that.  No son of mine is going to be a victim and no son of mine is going to have issues from this bit of darkness in our home.  Therapy will be mandatory.

The good side of all that is that he’s amazingly in touch with his feelings.  His self regulation skills are phenominal.  Sometimes so amazing that it scares me that he’s pushing bad feelings aside TOO much.  He will be upset, take a deep breath and move on.  It’s amazing to see.

I could go on and on about this darling little stinker butt but I fear I’ve already gone on enough.  But now you know there’s actually another little person in my house who gets loved and adored.  I wish I wrote about him more.  Mommy guilt is a horrible thing.

I love you Ikey Bikey Boo!

Bad Doggy!

I’m kinda mad at my dog Cleo right now.

We always have to put up a baby gate at the bottom of our stairs so she doesn’t get in to the garbages up there.

Today I forgot.

I came home and noticed I had forgotten and I bolted up the stairs to see the damage.  Computer room was ok, hall was ok, my room was ok…kid’s room….that’s where I got mad at Cleo.

Not because she ate a few diapers, it was my fault for leaving the gate down.  Not because when I went in to the bathroom I found more dirty diapers and other hideous bits of things I won’t speak about spread across the linoleum floor.  I didn’t even let my boys look in there for fear that it would alter them somehow.  Like baby Dexter in the shipping container.

I’m mat at Cleo because after she had her hay day with various body fluid catching recepticals, she took a big, fat dump in the middle of it all.

THAT was NOT my fault.

BAD doggy!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eustacia Cutler and I

I guess I’m not saving the best for last here, I’m just showing it first.  Not everyone gets to ever meet their hero ever in their lifetime.  Above is me with my 84 year old hero with her arms around me and Courtenay.

I.Am.Blessed

Eustacia Cutler is the mother of the famous Temple Grandin.  If you don’t know who she is then you need to google her…and watch this video.

I read Eustacia’s book in sept-ish 2009.  I believe it was one of the first autism books I could read.  It was hard for me to read about it because it would put me in the dumps in a big, bad way.  I picked up her book ( Thorn in my Pocket) and read it at Chapters while Ikey played with the train set there.  We were there every Wednesday and Thursday while Silas was in preschool.

Eustacia became my autism mommy hero.  Mother’s in that day were blamed for their child’s autism, they were told they never connected with the child and therefore the child is now mentally disturbed.  They were called refrigerator mothers.  Mothers who were ” hysterical” and in Eustacia’s own words “that means, in Freudian terms, that we…want a penis!”.

Eustacia ignored the “experts” and did not put her child in an institution.  She took the advise of some experts who didn’t think she was a crazy person and Temple is now world famous for her work with cattle and for her autism advocacy.  She is living on her own and everything!

Seeing Eustacia speak was amazing.  She gave us her story, incredibly well-spoken, and then went downstairs to sign her book.

I’m timid about getting ppl to sign things or having my photo taken with them.  Makes me feel funny, like I’m idolizing them or something.  I just couldn’t lose an opportunity to do with with her though, so I went to her table and waited for people to finish talking to her.

I then crouched down beside her and told her what her book meant to me.  With her arms around me I expressed how amazing it was that she was so forward thinking.  I told her she saw Temple for the human being that she was and not a problem to be fixed.

Then the most surprising thing happened…

Eustacia’s eyes lit up and she said “well I’ve never though of it like that before.”

What? I’ve taught HER something?  The woman who taught me so much has learned something, about herself no less, from me?

I felt pretty cool.

The night before I had tripped over my tongue talking to Elaine Hall, the lady who started The Miracle Project and directed Autism: The Musical.  I felt like a douche.

This made me feel much better.  So good, in fact, that I am still glowing and I might continue to glow for a long, long time.  Who gets to teach their hero something?  Or even gets to show them something in a new way?

Anywyay, beyond that, I was just so happy to see her, to have her arm around me and share a quiet moment with her.  Two autism mommies (and an autism therapist) loving autism for the beauty that it is.

Autism is Beautiful!

 

I’m still processing everything from the weekend.  I’m not sure what post to do first, what experiences to highlight.  I’m still buzzing from the amazingness of what I experienced at the conference.  I’m so blessed.

I’ve fallen even more in love with all that is autism.  I hate having to leave my kids for work.  I want to be part of things.  I want to implement everything I have learned.  I’m feeling very comfortable in my autism bubble and I don’t want to leave.

There’s so much to talk about but I don’t have the time today.  I have to work tonight.  Boo.

I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope it helped you see the human and the beauty and not the problem.