Shock and Autism (2009 re-post)
I am getting in the unhealthy habit of reposting old blogs.
Maybe I am running out of things to say, which is a development that my friends and family would all gather around and celebrate over. Maybe it is because I am spending a lot of time writing for school. Maybe it is because that I am just super-lazy and writing a new blog entry today would require me to skip my post-lunch nap.
The reason I have selected this entry is because I have finally bit the bullet and put myself out there. I have sent out close to 7 million (give or take 6.999 million) query letters to various literary agents in hopes that I can get some of my writing published. I have had offers from some folks in the past but never felt comfortable with what was being proposed...so now i am putting myself out there.
One of the literary agencies contacted me this morning to have me submit something I have written that was a favorite of mine. I chose "Shock and Autism". This was something I wrote almost three years ago and after re-reading it today it serves as a reminder to how different my life looks today than I had ever planned on it being. It is an entry that paints with large brushstrokes the theme of the book I want to write: "If a schlep-o like me can be a parent to a child living with ASD...than anyone can!"
I am re-editing this entry and sprucing it up a bit, but before I do I thought I would submit it again to you all in it's raw format. I never ever go back and read anything of mine, because I frankly find myself incredibly boring... but maybe this is one you have missed and maybe it will be of some use to you or someone you know.
Here you go...from 2009:
I just drank the most delicious sip of Carmel Macchiato ever! It was foamy caramel goodness that gave my sensitive taste buds a warm long hug. No, not an awkwardly long "Crazy Uncle Bert" hug....but a nice comforting one. It was a brief moment of raw yumminess and I am already sad that it has passed me by. Anyway....
I should really be working on something else right now. I have an extremely important deadline for a writing project that I am working on that is coming up very soon. (by very soon I mean like 48 hours) I am working on a writing fellowship that has come down to one last task....and it is a rather large one! I have spent sometime this morning trying to work on it, but I keep getting mentally sidetracked. Which I know for me is not a rare occurrence, I have the capacity to be sidetracked by the sound of the lady at the table next to me over-chew her bagel. I am easily distracted...blame my ADHD or the fact that I am the founder and prezzie of The Self Sabotage club.
So instead of remaining focused on the important task that is in front of me I need to post something here about something that is banging around my skull cave. I think in order to well on my fellowship work I need to purge my head...so here it goes. This will be a bit of a more somber blog entry. If you are among those who hate these particular type of entry please scroll all the way down to the end for a more juvenile entry.
I am not who I was a few years ago. I am a bit different.
However, there is still a lot about me that remains the same.
I am still the guy who will walk face first into a sliding glass door in Las Vegas.
I am still the dude who has no problem humiliating myself and my ancestors on a stage doing whatever it takes to try and make people laugh. You know the reason I am starting to disbelieve that ghosts actually exist is because I think by now I would have one of my dead relatives come visit me and tell me that I need to "quit disrobing on stage if I want to be admitted into the Roedel Afterlife Country Club".
I remain the man who can spend the day listening to the same cd over and over while sitting under a tree in Lions Park.
I am still the guy who is thinks that the best way to die is by Crab Leg overdose.
I am the Roedel that will make up his own catch phrases in hopes that one will catch on. Some of you might remember some of my greatest hits like "Feel The Sting".
For those people who have to endure me on a daily basis I am confident that there is much of me that remains true to the John Roedel system that I spent many years crafting. I understand though that underneath all my finely crafted neurosis something has fundamentally mutated.
I am changed.
I have been changed by the bombs that fell.
Of course everyone changes as they "grow up" and start playing adult. We take on new responsibilities and we start embracing more serious ventures. While I must admit I have attempted to grow up a bit I don't in any way shape or form believe that I have truly entered my serious adulthood phase yet.
Change began nine years ago when my wife became preggers. I can still vividly recall the wave of emotion that swept over me as I heard the news. At first I was overcome with a vibration of happiness for us, I knew my wife was born to be a mother and I had no doubt that this child was going to be raised in a loving home. I won't lie though...that was not the only emotion I felt that particular August afternoon. My 700 pound hairy ego raised his head from the pit of my bowels (eek...sorry for the imagery there) to start causing trouble. As I laid down in the grass in front of Hartman Hall to let the news set it I had a running dialog with my ego that sounded like this:
STUPID FAT EGO (SFE): Hey, John. Congrats on the Baby stuff I guess.
JOHN: Thanks Stupid Fat Ego. It is pretty awesome.
SFE: Awesome? Hmmm.
JOHN: Hmmm?
SFE: Oh. Nothing...it's just that I wonder how you adjust to how much your life is gonna change.
JOHN: It won't change that much.
SFE: Yeah right. Didn't you watch "Three Men and a Baby." and the follow up "Three men and a little lady"? Those three dudes life was altered forever...and that was with three of them!! And by the way you ain't no Ted Danson.
JOHN: Well of course things will change a little. I will grant you that....
SFE: It will be interesting to see how you handle all that. After all you are pretty self-centered.
JOHN: No I am not. I just put myself first most of the time.
SFE: Uh huh. Good luck with all that. I will be here waiting for your midlife crisis. When are we going to Vegas again?
JOHN: I don't like you. (pause) How about next month?
Ok. So in hindsight it appears that I may suffer from some sort of psychological disorder that allows me to have running conversations with myself. It also appears that part of my problem with adjusting to being a parent was the fact that the only real experience I had with children was watching "Three Men and a Baby".
I made a deal with myself that I was not going to let my ego get in the way of being a daddy. I was going to not subscribe to the notion that I had weakness that I could not get over. I was going to be the best dad ever...or at least as good of a dad as I could possibly be. Despite my "quirky" ways and situations I get roped into I have always had a plan for how my life was going to go. I had benchmarks and vocational deadlines set. I knew by what age I was going to own a home, have a six figure job, and take my first European cruise. I made plans to attempt to pretend like I had some sort of control over my life. I extended this planning to my new parenting adventure that was now laid out in front of me.
Before I became a "Daddy to the O" I had a vision of what that was going to look like. I had plans of how our family would operate. I knew that I would look to my wife to handle a lot of the heavy lifting when it came for caring for a newborn. After all I had a hard enough time figuring out how laundry got done, so caring for a baby seemed as intimidating as retaking Algebra.
Long before our little baby was born my wife and I planned everything out. We found out the sex of the baby ,(boy!) and we named him (Noah!) long before he took his first out of womb breath.In my mind I had even started long term planning. I had even started looking at pre-schools for the years ahead, and started counting down the days before we could take our little Noah to experience Disney World.
While Noah was cooking in his prenatal wonderland I put myself though various situations in my head of future parental dilemmas that would eventually come my way. I thought about how I would handle my son being bullied, or what I would do if he was the bully. I considered the idea of sleep away summer camps when he became teenager, and how much money I would give him to go out on his Senior Prom. Nobody could accuse me of not being forward thinking!!! I wanted to be prepared for everything.
After Noah was born the plans for his life became activated. Our families road map was delicately laid out in front of us! He was going to have the perfect life! Well his life was on course to be what I considered to be perfect.....fate had another definition of what the word perfect meant. It was a lot different than mine....
Eight years later as I type this I can tell you that there is no plan. There is only today and a loose outline for the future. I operate in the present more fully than ever...and that is exactly how I have changed!
My era of "Future Expectations" ended for me and my wife like so many other families in a plain white doctors office six years ago. The planning ended with one word "Autism". The future went from certain and carefully planned to hidden in one moment. It was a moment we had prepared ourselves for a few months prior as we knew something was terribly wrong with our little boy. Although in our hearts we had both probably known what the specialists were going to say we cognitively denied it before we got the diagnosis.
That diagnosis was like a bomb that landed in our front yard. Everything shattered. The foundation we had built was forever charred and destroyed. Despite our careful planning we had not ever considered that we would be having to rebuild our idea of family in such a radically different way. As we drove home that afternoon my wife and I could not say anything to each other that provided any relief. We were truly in a state of shock.
As the reality of what obstacles Noah was going to face began to surface the bombs continued to level my plans.
Would he be able to ever live independently?
BOOM!
Would he ever have friends?
BOOM!
Would he ever speak?
BOOM!
Will he ever know that his parents love him?
BOOM!
Can Noah experience all the joys and sadness that life offers?
BOOM!
Will he ever leave his world and join ours?
BOOM!!!
These are bombs that a family somewhere is dealing with every 20 minutes!!!!! That is really an amazing statistic isn't it? Three times an hour there is a mommy and daddy somewhere having to redefine what it means to be a parent.
It is because of these bombs and thousands like it that my wife and I immediately readjusted our expectations of what life was going to look like. Instead of planning for getting into the best pre-school we started working on trying to get Noah to try and communicate with us and a very basic level. Instead of spending money on getting a new family car we put the funds toward specialists. Instead of possible leaving Wyoming and seeing what life looked like outside our state we dug our roots into Cheyenne to give Noah some consistent care. Rather than planning for what life was going to look like three years down the road we focused more on surviving each day. The moment we were living in became the only thing that mattered. To think about the future on whatever expectations we had was too heartbreaking to do.
I remember when the US invaded Iraq in 2003. It was right during our darkest hours of our battle with Autism. We were living with the idea then that Noah may not ever be able to show us the boy who was trapped inside the Autism cocoon. Hope was at a premium in my heart.....
I was working at our families Drug Store and we had all gathered around a really old TV set to watch the aerial assault of Baghdad. The explosions were breathtaking and unlike anything I had ever seen. I remember thinking how much it was like watching a movie! I feel terrible for feeling so callous about that scene now. Regardless of whatever position people have on the war it goes without saying that with each one of those explosions a life would be forever changed. That under the glow of brilliant explosion a life would changed one way or another.
That moment on the TV has forever been called "Shock and Awe".
Each person who was affected by the bombing had a life plan that for either good or bad has forever been changed. Maybe their life is much better after that moment, maybe their life is not, and maybe their life ended right there on camera. In that moment people lost there control of their own life plan. They had to readjust...they had to change plans.
My life was changed by the bombs of autism. I am hoping for the better....
Everybody has life changing moments in their own life. I am not arguing that parents of special need children corner the market on this. It is just from this experience that I have had my own pole shift.
I am not the same person I was before autism came. While the foundation of how I had been living was leveled a new more solid one was been built.
I am a guy who no longer puts expectations on anything. I no longer label experiences as "good" or "bad". If I continued to do that then I would label Noah's life as "bad". Autism is part of what defines him, and I refuse to give any negative connotation to that. He is who he is. He is an amazing, funny, already-smarter than his father, artistic, little boy who has an innocence that allows him a reservoir of love that I cannot even comprehend. I no longer "expect" him to be anybody but himself. While I used to try and fight the autism out of him, I now embrace it for who he is.
I am a guy who enjoys the present more. I have become more aware on how important the now is. I cannot control what will happen five minutes from the present! I cannot stop future bombs from coming from nowhere...the only thing I can do is give thanks for the moment I am in. I make it a commitment to love the present more than ever before. I no longer wish for things to be different. I don't demand anymore that the universe provide me with more money, or a nicer house. (even though it would be nice...come on Powerball!) Without this new mode of thinking that sip of my Carmel Mochiatto would have just been another sip. It would not have become a transcendent voyage to tasty-town!
I am a guy who practices empathy more often. I try to judge people less because I hate it when people judge me or my family. I put myself in other folks shows a lot more...because I want other people to walk in mine a bit. Everyone has their own bombs falling on them. Everyone deserves compassion. Even a dude with a 700 pound stupid ego.
I am a cat who no longer measures success by the things I used to. I won't be a great dad by how many trips to Disneyworld I take my crew to. I will be a great dad when I master the art of letting my children be who they are destined to be. I am just here to keep them from lighting themselves on fire or killing the dog. I will leave some of the planning for who they are to be to them. After all they are their own expert!
I am a person who is no longer interested eating Scallops. Not that I think that has anything to do with autism...just thought you should know. This is a major development because I used to love Scallops like my dog likes "macking" lady dogs. Anyway...
I am a person who is much more humble and less apt to live at the whims of my monster-not-yet-dormant Ego that barks daily. I don't really care about being thought of highly by anyone but a select few people. I used to live under the craving of trying to make everyone like me.
I am no longer concerned with growing up and trying to impale myself on the spear of being a serious adult. I used to toil over why I was not acting like other 30-somethings. The post Autism Bomb reconstruction has taught me that we are who were are. I happen to be a guy who would rather spend my time making my children laugh, at a movie, or performing comedy. Autism has reminded me that in order for me to be happy with who I am...I need to BE WHO I AM.
April is Autism Awareness Month. It is a month that is spent providing advocacy for the scores of children who are living with Autism. The numbers of children and families who affected by autism is reshaping an entire generation of children. I have four speaking engagements during the month where I will be speaking about our families unique autism experience. I am hoping to convey the message that if someone like me can withstand the "Shock and Autism" then ANYONE can! I will talk about some of the perspectives we have learned as well as some of the methods of therapy we used. I will keep people up to date of the times and locations of these talks. If nothing else come and watch me try and mix laughter and autism together...it could get really interesting...or extremely weird. My main point will be that we should never surrender hope and to wake up to the good things in our life right now! This song is a could example of waking up to hope:
.......
Maybe I am running out of things to say, which is a development that my friends and family would all gather around and celebrate over. Maybe it is because I am spending a lot of time writing for school. Maybe it is because that I am just super-lazy and writing a new blog entry today would require me to skip my post-lunch nap.
The reason I have selected this entry is because I have finally bit the bullet and put myself out there. I have sent out close to 7 million (give or take 6.999 million) query letters to various literary agents in hopes that I can get some of my writing published. I have had offers from some folks in the past but never felt comfortable with what was being proposed...so now i am putting myself out there.
One of the literary agencies contacted me this morning to have me submit something I have written that was a favorite of mine. I chose "Shock and Autism". This was something I wrote almost three years ago and after re-reading it today it serves as a reminder to how different my life looks today than I had ever planned on it being. It is an entry that paints with large brushstrokes the theme of the book I want to write: "If a schlep-o like me can be a parent to a child living with ASD...than anyone can!"
I am re-editing this entry and sprucing it up a bit, but before I do I thought I would submit it again to you all in it's raw format. I never ever go back and read anything of mine, because I frankly find myself incredibly boring... but maybe this is one you have missed and maybe it will be of some use to you or someone you know.
Here you go...from 2009:
SHOCK AND AUTISM
I just drank the most delicious sip of Carmel Macchiato ever! It was foamy caramel goodness that gave my sensitive taste buds a warm long hug. No, not an awkwardly long "Crazy Uncle Bert" hug....but a nice comforting one. It was a brief moment of raw yumminess and I am already sad that it has passed me by. Anyway....
I should really be working on something else right now. I have an extremely important deadline for a writing project that I am working on that is coming up very soon. (by very soon I mean like 48 hours) I am working on a writing fellowship that has come down to one last task....and it is a rather large one! I have spent sometime this morning trying to work on it, but I keep getting mentally sidetracked. Which I know for me is not a rare occurrence, I have the capacity to be sidetracked by the sound of the lady at the table next to me over-chew her bagel. I am easily distracted...blame my ADHD or the fact that I am the founder and prezzie of The Self Sabotage club.
So instead of remaining focused on the important task that is in front of me I need to post something here about something that is banging around my skull cave. I think in order to well on my fellowship work I need to purge my head...so here it goes. This will be a bit of a more somber blog entry. If you are among those who hate these particular type of entry please scroll all the way down to the end for a more juvenile entry.
I am not who I was a few years ago. I am a bit different.
However, there is still a lot about me that remains the same.
I am still the guy who will walk face first into a sliding glass door in Las Vegas.
I am still the dude who has no problem humiliating myself and my ancestors on a stage doing whatever it takes to try and make people laugh. You know the reason I am starting to disbelieve that ghosts actually exist is because I think by now I would have one of my dead relatives come visit me and tell me that I need to "quit disrobing on stage if I want to be admitted into the Roedel Afterlife Country Club".
I remain the man who can spend the day listening to the same cd over and over while sitting under a tree in Lions Park.
I am still the guy who is thinks that the best way to die is by Crab Leg overdose.
I am the Roedel that will make up his own catch phrases in hopes that one will catch on. Some of you might remember some of my greatest hits like "Feel The Sting".
For those people who have to endure me on a daily basis I am confident that there is much of me that remains true to the John Roedel system that I spent many years crafting. I understand though that underneath all my finely crafted neurosis something has fundamentally mutated.
I am changed.
I have been changed by the bombs that fell.
Of course everyone changes as they "grow up" and start playing adult. We take on new responsibilities and we start embracing more serious ventures. While I must admit I have attempted to grow up a bit I don't in any way shape or form believe that I have truly entered my serious adulthood phase yet.
Change began nine years ago when my wife became preggers. I can still vividly recall the wave of emotion that swept over me as I heard the news. At first I was overcome with a vibration of happiness for us, I knew my wife was born to be a mother and I had no doubt that this child was going to be raised in a loving home. I won't lie though...that was not the only emotion I felt that particular August afternoon. My 700 pound hairy ego raised his head from the pit of my bowels (eek...sorry for the imagery there) to start causing trouble. As I laid down in the grass in front of Hartman Hall to let the news set it I had a running dialog with my ego that sounded like this:
STUPID FAT EGO (SFE): Hey, John. Congrats on the Baby stuff I guess.
JOHN: Thanks Stupid Fat Ego. It is pretty awesome.
SFE: Awesome? Hmmm.
JOHN: Hmmm?
SFE: Oh. Nothing...it's just that I wonder how you adjust to how much your life is gonna change.
JOHN: It won't change that much.
SFE: Yeah right. Didn't you watch "Three Men and a Baby." and the follow up "Three men and a little lady"? Those three dudes life was altered forever...and that was with three of them!! And by the way you ain't no Ted Danson.
JOHN: Well of course things will change a little. I will grant you that....
SFE: It will be interesting to see how you handle all that. After all you are pretty self-centered.
JOHN: No I am not. I just put myself first most of the time.
SFE: Uh huh. Good luck with all that. I will be here waiting for your midlife crisis. When are we going to Vegas again?
JOHN: I don't like you. (pause) How about next month?
Ok. So in hindsight it appears that I may suffer from some sort of psychological disorder that allows me to have running conversations with myself. It also appears that part of my problem with adjusting to being a parent was the fact that the only real experience I had with children was watching "Three Men and a Baby".
I made a deal with myself that I was not going to let my ego get in the way of being a daddy. I was going to not subscribe to the notion that I had weakness that I could not get over. I was going to be the best dad ever...or at least as good of a dad as I could possibly be. Despite my "quirky" ways and situations I get roped into I have always had a plan for how my life was going to go. I had benchmarks and vocational deadlines set. I knew by what age I was going to own a home, have a six figure job, and take my first European cruise. I made plans to attempt to pretend like I had some sort of control over my life. I extended this planning to my new parenting adventure that was now laid out in front of me.
Before I became a "Daddy to the O" I had a vision of what that was going to look like. I had plans of how our family would operate. I knew that I would look to my wife to handle a lot of the heavy lifting when it came for caring for a newborn. After all I had a hard enough time figuring out how laundry got done, so caring for a baby seemed as intimidating as retaking Algebra.
Long before our little baby was born my wife and I planned everything out. We found out the sex of the baby ,(boy!) and we named him (Noah!) long before he took his first out of womb breath.In my mind I had even started long term planning. I had even started looking at pre-schools for the years ahead, and started counting down the days before we could take our little Noah to experience Disney World.
While Noah was cooking in his prenatal wonderland I put myself though various situations in my head of future parental dilemmas that would eventually come my way. I thought about how I would handle my son being bullied, or what I would do if he was the bully. I considered the idea of sleep away summer camps when he became teenager, and how much money I would give him to go out on his Senior Prom. Nobody could accuse me of not being forward thinking!!! I wanted to be prepared for everything.
After Noah was born the plans for his life became activated. Our families road map was delicately laid out in front of us! He was going to have the perfect life! Well his life was on course to be what I considered to be perfect.....fate had another definition of what the word perfect meant. It was a lot different than mine....
Eight years later as I type this I can tell you that there is no plan. There is only today and a loose outline for the future. I operate in the present more fully than ever...and that is exactly how I have changed!
My era of "Future Expectations" ended for me and my wife like so many other families in a plain white doctors office six years ago. The planning ended with one word "Autism". The future went from certain and carefully planned to hidden in one moment. It was a moment we had prepared ourselves for a few months prior as we knew something was terribly wrong with our little boy. Although in our hearts we had both probably known what the specialists were going to say we cognitively denied it before we got the diagnosis.
That diagnosis was like a bomb that landed in our front yard. Everything shattered. The foundation we had built was forever charred and destroyed. Despite our careful planning we had not ever considered that we would be having to rebuild our idea of family in such a radically different way. As we drove home that afternoon my wife and I could not say anything to each other that provided any relief. We were truly in a state of shock.
As the reality of what obstacles Noah was going to face began to surface the bombs continued to level my plans.
Would he be able to ever live independently?
BOOM!
Would he ever have friends?
BOOM!
Would he ever speak?
BOOM!
Will he ever know that his parents love him?
BOOM!
Can Noah experience all the joys and sadness that life offers?
BOOM!
Will he ever leave his world and join ours?
BOOM!!!
These are bombs that a family somewhere is dealing with every 20 minutes!!!!! That is really an amazing statistic isn't it? Three times an hour there is a mommy and daddy somewhere having to redefine what it means to be a parent.
It is because of these bombs and thousands like it that my wife and I immediately readjusted our expectations of what life was going to look like. Instead of planning for getting into the best pre-school we started working on trying to get Noah to try and communicate with us and a very basic level. Instead of spending money on getting a new family car we put the funds toward specialists. Instead of possible leaving Wyoming and seeing what life looked like outside our state we dug our roots into Cheyenne to give Noah some consistent care. Rather than planning for what life was going to look like three years down the road we focused more on surviving each day. The moment we were living in became the only thing that mattered. To think about the future on whatever expectations we had was too heartbreaking to do.
I remember when the US invaded Iraq in 2003. It was right during our darkest hours of our battle with Autism. We were living with the idea then that Noah may not ever be able to show us the boy who was trapped inside the Autism cocoon. Hope was at a premium in my heart.....
I was working at our families Drug Store and we had all gathered around a really old TV set to watch the aerial assault of Baghdad. The explosions were breathtaking and unlike anything I had ever seen. I remember thinking how much it was like watching a movie! I feel terrible for feeling so callous about that scene now. Regardless of whatever position people have on the war it goes without saying that with each one of those explosions a life would be forever changed. That under the glow of brilliant explosion a life would changed one way or another.
That moment on the TV has forever been called "Shock and Awe".
Each person who was affected by the bombing had a life plan that for either good or bad has forever been changed. Maybe their life is much better after that moment, maybe their life is not, and maybe their life ended right there on camera. In that moment people lost there control of their own life plan. They had to readjust...they had to change plans.
My life was changed by the bombs of autism. I am hoping for the better....
Everybody has life changing moments in their own life. I am not arguing that parents of special need children corner the market on this. It is just from this experience that I have had my own pole shift.
I am not the same person I was before autism came. While the foundation of how I had been living was leveled a new more solid one was been built.
I am a guy who no longer puts expectations on anything. I no longer label experiences as "good" or "bad". If I continued to do that then I would label Noah's life as "bad". Autism is part of what defines him, and I refuse to give any negative connotation to that. He is who he is. He is an amazing, funny, already-smarter than his father, artistic, little boy who has an innocence that allows him a reservoir of love that I cannot even comprehend. I no longer "expect" him to be anybody but himself. While I used to try and fight the autism out of him, I now embrace it for who he is.
I am a guy who enjoys the present more. I have become more aware on how important the now is. I cannot control what will happen five minutes from the present! I cannot stop future bombs from coming from nowhere...the only thing I can do is give thanks for the moment I am in. I make it a commitment to love the present more than ever before. I no longer wish for things to be different. I don't demand anymore that the universe provide me with more money, or a nicer house. (even though it would be nice...come on Powerball!) Without this new mode of thinking that sip of my Carmel Mochiatto would have just been another sip. It would not have become a transcendent voyage to tasty-town!
I am a guy who practices empathy more often. I try to judge people less because I hate it when people judge me or my family. I put myself in other folks shows a lot more...because I want other people to walk in mine a bit. Everyone has their own bombs falling on them. Everyone deserves compassion. Even a dude with a 700 pound stupid ego.
I am a cat who no longer measures success by the things I used to. I won't be a great dad by how many trips to Disneyworld I take my crew to. I will be a great dad when I master the art of letting my children be who they are destined to be. I am just here to keep them from lighting themselves on fire or killing the dog. I will leave some of the planning for who they are to be to them. After all they are their own expert!
I am a person who is no longer interested eating Scallops. Not that I think that has anything to do with autism...just thought you should know. This is a major development because I used to love Scallops like my dog likes "macking" lady dogs. Anyway...
I am a person who is much more humble and less apt to live at the whims of my monster-not-yet-dormant Ego that barks daily. I don't really care about being thought of highly by anyone but a select few people. I used to live under the craving of trying to make everyone like me.
I am no longer concerned with growing up and trying to impale myself on the spear of being a serious adult. I used to toil over why I was not acting like other 30-somethings. The post Autism Bomb reconstruction has taught me that we are who were are. I happen to be a guy who would rather spend my time making my children laugh, at a movie, or performing comedy. Autism has reminded me that in order for me to be happy with who I am...I need to BE WHO I AM.
April is Autism Awareness Month. It is a month that is spent providing advocacy for the scores of children who are living with Autism. The numbers of children and families who affected by autism is reshaping an entire generation of children. I have four speaking engagements during the month where I will be speaking about our families unique autism experience. I am hoping to convey the message that if someone like me can withstand the "Shock and Autism" then ANYONE can! I will talk about some of the perspectives we have learned as well as some of the methods of therapy we used. I will keep people up to date of the times and locations of these talks. If nothing else come and watch me try and mix laughter and autism together...it could get really interesting...or extremely weird. My main point will be that we should never surrender hope and to wake up to the good things in our life right now! This song is a could example of waking up to hope:
.......
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