My Life

 

i am a mother of twins.  4 years old. my lilybird and magpie.  Lily is on spectrum. Maggie is not. Lily has been diagnosed with autism. You can view her story here:  Lily’s story part 1. An update follows here:  Lily’s story part 2.  

Lily has been diagnosed with autism first.  Next was childhood apraxia of speech.  With these came dyspraxia and sensory integration issues.

I am a wife. Married 10 years to a freelance filmmaker whom I worked alongside for years making movies until we started a family.  I am a stay at home mother now and it is very much like a film production except the rewards are plentiful

Autism is the sun of our world   We revolve around it.  But it does not consume us  It gives us light.  Autism helps us see the things that we take for granted as meaningful things.  It redefines our sense of beauty and understanding of the world and even the world is blinded by the truth inside that light.  As dark as it may seem it makes us shine the world to see what this definitions means.  What is beauty?  Individuality.  Being wired differently means being different.  Very different.  Sometimes overlooked. Transparent.  Because it’s just that hard to see yourself inside the eyes of someone just as different as you might be.

I can relate.  I heard the word autism at the age of 16-17.   My brother said it out loud.  He knew a kid that was autistic.  He had autism.  I thought the word meant gifted.   Something special.   I had never heard of it.  I was young.  My brother went on to say how smart he was, he could tell you your birth date, win every chess game…I remember that.   That’s the last I knew of autism.

I went to school.  I graduated school.  I went to college.  I married my husband.  I worked with my husband.  We started a family.  I had twins.  One child was born with autism.  I knew that word at diagnosis time.  I’d heard of that before.  That gifted child my brother spoke of.  That very smart kid that was very different but not unlike the rest of us.

What is autism?

You define it.