Author's Note: This piece originally appeared on OpEdNews.com and can be seen HERE. I wrote it over a year ago and only now remembered that I should totally share it with you!! I have many posts at OpEdNews, most of which at least make a mention of autism, but this one is absolutely up our Autism Answers ally!! Hugs!!! ~Tsara
Themes. Hollywood takes advantage of them. It’s much easier
to tell a story when sticking with a theme.
It can be much easier to understand a life when thinking in
themes, too. Our family has a few, but the big one for us is: Autism.
My mom was an undiagnosed autistic. Being her daughter could
be frightfully embarrassing, heartbreaking and eye opening. I struggled for
years with guilt over the way I treated my mom in my head.
Autism is a funny thing. You can’t see it. It’s very much
the same symptoms in individuals (communication difficulties, social disorder,
repetitious behaviors and sensory sensitivities) manifesting vastly differently in each. Much like
society’s view of depression, there are those who want to believe that it’s
something people are choosing, or taking advantage of as an excuse.
My mom grew up hearing she was crazy, an underachiever,
cheeky, a psychic, a slut, and more and more and more. When she would excitedly
share the colors of sound, her mom would hit her. When she answered rhetorical,
“Who do you think you are?” type questions with the correct answer, “LynetteLouise”, a punishment and lecture she couldn’t understand would result. She
promised herself that one day she would be the mom of many children, so that
she could treat them with love and fairness. If she couldn’t understand a world
of unfairness, she would create one that made sense. Her autistic perseveration
became: Fairness.
As the (very) young mom of two little girls (me and my sis)
she had to have a hysterectomy. The depression that followed was short lived
but clinical. Because of me and my sister my mom refused to give in and
searched with intention for an answer.
The answer came in a crazy and frightfully feral little
three year old boy waiting for a bed in a mental institution. My mom became his
mom.
He became our brother.
Our answer was Autism.
My mom eventually adopted three more boys on the spectrum of
autism. She had an innate gift with my brothers. She believed in them in a way
that no person (including their birth parents) had believed in them before. She
saw herself in them.
But I intended for this article to be about having an
autistic mom, and so it shall.
As the daughter of an undiagnosed autistic my world tended
to revolve around how my mom’s weirdness' affected me. If a situation arose at
school and teachers were to be contacted I would do anything to be somewhere
else for the confrontation. To begin with, no matter how many times my mom had
met the teacher it was quite likely she wouldn’t recognize their face and would
rudely not remember them. Mom’s vision was pixilated and she had a sort of face
blindness. Then once the grown-up in question had been reintroduced, my mom
would begin insisting on a fairness that systems and schools just don’t have
room for. My mom’s hyper-focus on a fair world left no wiggle room. And
although my mom was always kind in the delivery, she was relentless and
insistent on the end result. My mom’s kindness believed in compromise, but her
autistic intensity insisted on a fair one. One that saw the human needs in
everyone, in all of her kids. Yes, even the crazy ones.
For example, when only two of my brothers were permitted to
ride the school bus, because they were the only ones broken enough to do so, my
mom said absolutely not! She would not have two of her boys forced to walk
because they weren’t "disabled" enough while the other two’s disabilities were reinforced
by having them not trusted to walk. Mom’s solution? Tie one higher functioning
child to one lower functioning child with a shoe lace so they could walk all
together to school. The solution was brilliant and when done with explanation
gifted everyone with important learnings that believed in a future. The only
snag, it wasn’t normal or socially acceptable. My mom’s solution was rather
autistic.
No mother could love her children or believe in them more
than my mom. Maybe the same, but not more. No matter what child services,
doctors or nosy neighbors said, my mom saw us kids as people with unlimited
potential.
Lots of days, I hated that.
My mom’s intense belief in fairness (and before you go
thinking that at least her perseveration was fairness, remember that a desire
to see everyone treated equally drove her into a depression that could have
killed her. Her experience of needing fairness hurt her, and she is amazing for
reminding herself daily to smile, keep on putting one foot in front of the other
and be the change) and teaching the world—as a comedian her fart jokes always
led to ozone information and her penis jokes led to hilarious and important
jokes of judgments and intentional self-healing—could be exhausting. Her
willingness to forgive us kids while coupled with perfectly appropriate punishments was
so different from any of my friends’ families that I was often left wondering if my mom was brilliant or crazy.
Because of the autism in our house we prioritized different
than most. The question was never, “what will be the easier mess to clean-up
after” but rather “what will benefit most of the family the quickest”. Hence, we
were a loud, messy, laughing, and crazy group.
There just wasn’t a lot of room for cruelty in our home.
Unfortunately, it happened anyway, in my head.
Sometimes my mom would stand up in the middle of a
conversation at a coffee shop and exclaim, “It’s too cold. I have to go now.”
No gradual easing into it. Just “Gotta. Go. Now.” What we didn’t know at the
time was that up until that point she had been dealing with a myriad of sensory
overload. She couldn’t tell us because as far as she knew the world she was
experiencing was the same as ours. I would be embarrassed at her rudeness in
these moments and blame her—always in my mind—for needing attention. When my
mom could not stand casual conversation with my friend's parents and therefor
walk away rudely, I would despise her snobby attitude. When my mom would drive
past our destination six or seven times because she was hyper-focused on an
idea that might come together and make the world a fairer place, I would charge
her with trying to seem like an absent minded genius.
I had these thoughts and more. Worse were some of the things
I thought about my brothers. Suffice it to say that when my mom would insist I
see adorable little boys struggling with challenges they could overcome, I
considered my mom to be playing the role of martyr, wanting to feel persecuted against by a world who saw disabled children with no future and refusing to see the truth. Everyone else believed my brothers would never be able to be independent. Everyone but my mother. So I chose to believe everyone.
I’m not proud of these thoughts, but they were there. What I
am proud of is that I was mostly able
to be kind. That I have almost always been very supportive to my mom and
willing to open my eyes to the beautiful possibilities she always insisted were
there.
I am proud that three of my four brothers are no longer
diagnosable as autistic. That my brother who still is at home is happily
learning, albeit very slowly. I am proud that my mom has been able to turn her
passion for autism and fairness into a global autism/brain
expert career, one woman musical comedy show, books, popular podcast, and the international reality series FIX IT IN FIVE with LYNETTE LOUISE aka THE BRAIN BROAD (showing on The Autism Channel).
I am proud that I have taught my own boys the value of
kindness and believing in everyone despite appearances or difference. And the
value of forgiving your self-centered childish brain for having self-centered
childish thoughts.
Our theme for learning these important lessons was autism.
Having an undiagnosed autistic mom taught me to be fair, kind, and unassuming.
It taught me to see outside the box, because a box is no
place for a person.
It taught me to forgive myself and learn from my mistakes.
Because of autism I have started writing, sharing and being
myself loudly. I have chosen a motto for
my Facebook page that rings true and reminds me daily how lucky our
difficulties can make us.
Motto: Autism asks challenging questions, begs us to think
outside the box and then, Autism
Answers.
Hugs, smiles, and love!!
 |
| Our wonderfully wacky family!! |
Tsara Shelton is a
writer, coffee addict, and proud mother of four always eating teenage boys. Random thoughts and pleas for more food can
be read daily on her Facebook page Autism Answers.
