Once a site for my own confessions about being a mom of an autistic son. Now a site where we can both share our writing.
I’m spending the night in the city again. I drag my suitcase quickly out of the car, aware that I don’t want to lean into the car for too long at this point of night and lose track of what might be happening behind me on the city sidewalk. After heading into our escape hatch…
You might not like me very much after this post, but that’s something I’ll have to live with. After all, the main point of this post is just that–the truth is not very popular. I can only speak for my husband and myself here when I say that we lie every single day. We lie…
Over Spring Break of this year, we went on an “epic road trip” (the use of the word epic usually makes me cringe, but in this case, I’m going to declare that it applies). To save money and to hit various spots along the way (including Birmingham, AL and New Orleans, LA), we drove from Washington,…
Before I get too far down 2014, a year that has started out with an exhausted, unmotivated version of myself, I figured that I should catalog, in prose form, where we are in our “Autistic Life”. If I wait any longer to document this particular moment, it will quickly melt into the daily landscape of…
WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST. But these thoughts have been simmering for a while, so I’ve had a chance to come up with a lot of material. 🙂 *********** So we really put ourselves out there when we sought out the Huffington Post to share our story (the local Washington Post apparently found nothing…
As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s not always easy to get great images of my son, despite the fact that I am a photographer, and–more importantly–in spite of his beauty. Yup, I said it. He is a beautiful little boy. His face may be scratched up (he’s kind of rough and tumble and has a very,…
So there’s a big kerfuffle/hullabaloo/blog-a-thon out there at the moment regarding Autism Speaks, its ongoing failures, and its recent call for action to fix/address/cure/prevent the autism crisis in American from spreading. First, I must confess that I don’t pay much attention to Autism Speaks or any major autism groups, whether they’re run by autistic advocates,…
Dear Baby D, Before I knew who you would become, I somehow selected the perfect middle name for you: Grace*. You are filled with it, even though you do not yet know this. Last week one night, while your brother raged, attempted to bite your Mommy and Daddy’s faces, pull our hair, and throw everything…
This is why you will rarely see a special needs parent step up to manage a school auction. And yes, I actually sat down this morning, after opening up my inbox to discover my second piece of bad news for the day (more legal details to come) and shared all of these details with a…
On some nights, as my daughter watches her pre-bed TV downstairs in our living room with my husband, I opt for putting my son to sleep in our bed, rather than lying with him in the darkness of his. I dim the sconce lights low on either side of our bed, and get some work…