Autism: No Cure Please

Autism is personal.  Don’t for a minute think it is not.  It’s not like cancer.  Cancer invades the body and can be hated and managed with well known drugs and a defined path of treatment.  Autism can barely be defined much less managed and treated with any kind of defined path.  Doctors will throw darts at the symptoms and some will offer therapies that are likely not covered by insurance but a path to cure will not be part of any autism I have known. 

The word Autism is confining. 

I am happy they at least added the spectrum.  What happens on your spectrum, because everyone’s navigation is different, is up to you.  Whether you crawl and moan upon your spectrum or you stand up tall and dance out loud, it’s a personal choice. It really is all up to you.  The spectrum is personal.  Never doubt that.

Autism is a gray area that, even upon diagnosis, has yet to be defined.  As I tend to often repeat, it is fluid, ever changing and mysterious.  It will surprise you if you let it, it will rock your world and knock your socks off in moments.  It will also test you, beat you up and you will rise up to the challenge it poses even in the moments when it is beating you down.  Good parents always do, whether it is planned and conscious or not.  Great parents will go forward with new therapies they believe will help and will say no to the quackery.  It is a defining moment as a parent to be invited to step up to autism. 

Parents of children with special needs can change over time.  Over time they become warriors.  After they finish their moments of grieving or adjusting to what autism is, they stop whining, stop complaining and giving into their wishbone.  They start growing that backbone and they stand upright and fight for their child.  If it hasn’t happened to you yet…just wait because it will. Unless, of course, you are blessed with one of those school districts who are forward thinking and understand autism.  The districts where they do not make you fight.  Where children are given what they need and expectations are set high just because it is the right thing to do.  Bless you if you have that school district and bless them for making your spectrum dance one jive, hoppin, rockin’ place to be. 

Loving autism never seemed like a path I would take.  Avoiding, anger, denial and hopelessness might have been a more apt prediction of my feelings in the early days.  Marveling, laughing and being thankful for a son on the spectrum did not seem likely when he was diagnosed at 2.  I might have thought you were out of your mind for even suggesting anything remotely possible.  Autism is an affliction, a handicap, a way to lose a child might have been what I thought way back then.  Autism, once upon a time, was a death sentence.

            Thankfully times change and thankfully we are able to change with them. 

There are days when the light shines bright and God’s sense of humor soaks into me.  When I see more than just the “A” word.  When my son’s voice shares with me what his spectrum goggles see and I too, in that moment, can see the brilliance that radiates from him.  I love those moments; would trade nothing in this world for them.  I would trade nothing for that cure you search for.  I would not change him.  His radiance would be lost in your cure.

I would not cure his autism. 

I like to leave every hair in place, just like it is.  I would leave each cell in his brain intact, functioning just as he was wired on the day he was born.  The only thing I want to do is enhance his dance, build to his strengths and let him grow more and more into who he is supposed to be.  NOT into who the guidebook says he is supposed to be; like every other child.  I cringe to think of what my life would have been like had I not been blessed with his radiance, his vivacious and unpredictable nature.  I honestly cannot imagine what my life would look like if he had not danced into my life with his iridescent glow.  I am thankful, beyond these simple words, for the iridescent boy he is and the blessing he has brought to my life.

He is perfect. 

He is beautiful. 

He is spontaneous. 

He is not like anyone I have ever met. 

He is challenging. 

His  imperfection is perfect. 

He is the reason I am who I am. 

A Ropeless Lynching

Was Trayvon lynched?
No, you're right, no rope was used.  And, you're right again, no mob was employed but I would say, for Emmit and Trayvon along with many others, it was a lynching just the same.
Trayon is not the first but, today, as we stand wanting to forget the black mark that slavery, fear and racism have left up on our country (at our own hand I have to add) how much better are we today?  And, the question has to also be asked...who is next?  Does the fear the shooter felt envelop anyone who is different?
Black boys get killed in the United States.  It's a quiet part of our history. We cannot back pedal and pretend it does not happen because, let me just say, it is irrefutable.  It is a fact.  We have been doing it for centuries at least.  It is not a well advertised part of who we are as Americans but it is a true part of who we have become.
We can trace it.
We can document it.
We can face it.
Trayvon Martin is not the first.  And, as apparent and appalling as it may be, he will not be the last.  Names like Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, Emmit Till, and James Chaney all came before Trayvon.  And, let's be honest...these are just the headline names I am giving you.  There are more.  There are certainly more.  There are bodies that have yet to be uncovered to this day.  And though they were all killed by different methods, they were all essentially lynched.
There are many definitions of lynching.  Surprisingly, there is even a definition, for legal purposes, for "second-degree" lynching.  I advise you against traveling over to Wikipedia to look up "lynching" because the pictures to document the word are hard to handle.  But, then again, it is our history.  Perhaps everyone should see the pictures just so you can remember who we have been so we do our best not to travel back to that darkness.
For me, I believe the word "lynch" is defined too narrowly.  Yes, when you hang someone in a tree with a mob that is a true definition of the word.  But, for me, I would also lift up the idea that Hezekia Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were lynched.  Let's call it a "ropeless lynching".  Simply because when you tie two young men to a Jeep engine block and throw them into the Mississippi River when they are still alive, well, in my book that is just as much of a lynching as a man tied and hanging from a tree.  And, I would also venture to say that a young boy of 14, Emmit Till, who flirted with a white woman was also lynched.  After his flirtation, young Emmit was taken to a barn, beaten and his eye gouged out in the process.  He was then shot in the head and tied to a cotton gin fan and thrown into the Tallahatchie River.  I call this a ropeless lynching.  I am okay with forgoing the rope to relax the definition because in all these cases, the intention and result are the same.  Fear and hatred precede a violent and premature death for these black men.
And, I would go so far as to say, with a gun in the hand of a stranger and a hoodie on the boy's head, young Trayvon was also lynched.  Fear and hatred led to his premature death.  Though no rope was present and no paper documenting the premeditation, he was certainly lynched.  Perhaps the premeditation was created through years of pervasive racism?  I am not familiar with the shooter but I am concerned as a mom of two boys who rather consistently wear hoodies with the hoods up to warm their ears.  And, I wonder, with my autistic son being verbally impaired, would he be mistaken for a dangerous young man with his hoodie up and the inability to communicate clearly?
There is a lot to think about, discuss and to wonder about.  It is a tragedy for all involved.  I am sorry for Trayvon's mother that her son's name will be a headline name from today forward instead of being just another mother's source of joy and love.  I am sorry that he has to be a lesson for the rest of us rather than a young man unfolding his life to his family.