Going from Grief to Growth…

When we first received the news that my angel boy was autistic, it took the oxygen from lungs.  It made my heart stop.  It made my stomach drop.  With the word autism came so much grief, worry and uncertainty.  With it came a sack of worries that I could never ever put down.  Continuously dragging it with me everywhere I went.

We’re now years into our journey with autism and I can tell you one thing that I have learnt through my time of watching him.  Studying him.  Looking at how to meet his needs…..my angel boy is not defined by his autism.

Autism does not define who he is.

Just as I don’t think much of my own label of being neurotypical, I don’t think much of my angel boy’s label of being autistic.  My worries lay with his needs being met, the food that he eats, the information he consumes on his ipad and how much or how little sleep he gets.

You see, society has put a label on autism that means it’s different, bad, odd, weird or insert here whatever label it’s been described to you as.

I was recently reading a book called Special by Melanie Dimmit.  In one of the chapters, she writes:

“A friend of a friend who has a four-year-old boy with Down Syndrome, rang us the day after Ike’s diagnosis.  ‘I hear you’ve won the lotto,’ he said.  We stared at the phone, on loudspeaker.  We were silent.  ‘You’ve won the lotto, mate.  They’re the best kids.’

The world has decided to put special needs kids into a box of hard, troublesome, exhausting and overwhelming.  But what if I said to you what would the world look like if every child on this planet was special needs, how would you feel?  How would you feel if every single child had difficulties and hardships that they had to overcome.  Some hardships may be bigger than others, some may be smaller than others.

How would parents cope?  How would they see their children?

Now some parents may say, but that isn’t reality.  Reality is that there’s lots of typical kids and there’s lots of special needs kids, and my response to that would be there are lots of devastated, not coping and overwhelmed mums just as there are mums who are thriving, see the glass half full and know that this child was always destined for their family.

Perception plays such a big role in how we accept the diagnosis.  Just as the saying goes you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.  I can teach you the strategies, but if you’re not ready to invite those strategies into your world you will always stay swimming in the pool of it’s not fair, why me, why us?

Now if I’m being brutally honest, there are still times that I dip my toe into this pool.  It’s just a toe, its brief and I know when I’m there and I know what I need to do in order to get out.

Your mindset is what will set you free.

If you, when you look at your child, find yourself feeling heartbroken, devastated, grief stricken know that your energy is flowing to your child.  Know that your energy is flowing to the universe, cosmos, God, whatever you believe in because even with science one action causes a re-action.

Let’s change your view.   Swap out your lenses.   Because the view can be pretty damn sweet.

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