Autism Answer: Driving the Boys

 

 

My sons enjoying a moment out of the car during a road trip

When I think back, when I remember, we are in the car. Me and my four sons, on our way.

It is being in the car that is the thing.

They are mine when we are in the car.

Oh, I know, they are not mine. They belong to themselves, these small boys fighting over who is the red ranger, spilling sports drinks on the seats, singing their hearts out to Higher by Creed.

Did I say small boys? They were, I remember.

Yet I can also look back and they are teenagers of various stages. When we are just us in the car, on our way places but not yet arrived, they are still mine. Okay, they belong to themselves, I know. They tell me clearly, with attitudes that suit each one individually but say the same: drive us, but let us go.

Oh, my heart. Did I say teenagers? They were, I swear it.

But now, look at these men in my car. My sons. We are on our way after having picked up my youngest from the airport. They are visiting me from their own homes around the world; some have spouses and children waiting for us to arrive. I stole this time for myself. Only me and them alone in the car. We are singing our hearts out to Mariana’s Trench, Three Days Grace, remembering live shows I took them to. We are singing our hearts out and I am tempted never to arrive.

The truth: I have arrived when we are us in the car.

Yet I must let them go so they, too, can arrive.

How could I deny them, these men who are my heart, who influence the colour of my days, the bounce in my step, the tightness in my chest, the direction of my thoughts, how could I deny them this feeling of having arrived?

This feeling that is mine only when I am denying it to them. This feeling that is mine when they are alone with me and I am sharing them with no one else.

I need to know they know this feeling.

If they recognize this feeling of home – for that is how I feel when it is me and my four sons alone in a car: home – I can breathe easily, knowing they have access to this perfect feeling.

When I think back, when I remember, we are in the car. Me and my four sons, on our way.

When I open my eyes, when I am now, I see them in their cars, on their way.

Driving the boys gave me the gift of being with them, taking them where they needed to go.

Arriving was never the point.

Driving the boys until they were able to drive themselves, that was the point.

We did it often, we did it well, we did it while singing out hearts out.

We do it still, when we can.

An arrival worth revisiting.

 # 

 

Hugs, smiles, and love!

Tsara Shelton (x.com) 

Autism Answer: Different By Degrees

 

DANE

feeling like himself in a dress

feeling lovable when feminine

feeling loving while nurturing

feeling envy for the ones born with it

seeking fabrics and surgeries

avoiding past acquaintances

comparing herself to the ones advocating for it

being different by degrees

becoming different by degrees

 

DARLA

feeling like herself when youthful

feeling lovable when vibrant

feeling loving when energetically attentive

feeling envy for the ones not yet grown out of it

seeking moisturizers and surgeries

avoiding reflecting mirrors

comparing herself to the ones budgeting for it

focusing different by degrees

fighting becoming different by degrees

 

DEBBIE

feeling like herself while stimming

feeling lovable when praised

feeling loving while assimilating

feeling envy toward savants

seeking sensory pleasure and protection

avoiding social scenes

comparing herself to siblings

asking for different by degrees

being different by degrees  

 

Different

 by degrees 

_______

Tsara (X.com)

Autism Answer: Your Story

 

Morning view

You were born into your circumstances, remember that? Slowly unfolding to become yourself, guided by the spaces presenting themselves to you. Spaces that shifted as home, family, and expectations evolved around you.

It was almost never up to you, where you went or how. So small and without any control, you were moved this way and that, told what was what, expected to find your way to fit in. Also to stand out.

Sure, you were quickly thinking beyond the things people said, feeling emotions beyond easy comprehension. You asked your own questions, were met with mixed reactions. It’s sad when I think of how often you were cruelly shut down or insidiously (even if unintentionally) misled. I’m sorry about that for you.

But the freedom, too! Especially in your mind. Especially when you think of the ideas you’d explore, alone in yourself, tangled up in there with all the stories, rules, expectations, and myths given to you by others. The freedom to move ideas this way and that, consider them from every angle, overlaid with the ever growing roster of experience you were racking up. Freedom to imagine and think about their things your way. 

Yes. Despite the freedom there was nothing you could do about the filtering in of expectations on you from others: what you should or shouldn’t be doing. And then that other level, what “someone like you” should or shouldn’t be doing.

Your questions and ideas were encouraged by some, punished by others. Ya, it was messy, and the freedom was still only of imagination and mind, or spiritual, or whatever, and it was never without the influence of outside of you, but it was there. It was there!

Do you think it was that freedom from inside yourself that finally spilled outward? The freedom of thinking, of exploring your own ideas, that pushed you to seek your proper place, physically? I think it must have been. Or at least, it contributed.

Where do you physically go when you know you didn’t physically choose where you are? Your first choice: somewhere else.  

Speaking of physical, those were the first real years of seeking to understand your sexual self, weren’t they? How crazy it is, that ride! It’s almost like losing the freedom of your mind while getting some freedom of body. The hormones have ideas of their own but don’t speak our language or obey our rules, so we’re desperately telling the story of why we did what we did or they did what they did or who they think I should be or who I think I am and who I want to be, trying to catch up with what’s happening to ourselves and our peers…. Well, you know. You were there.

Remind me, what was that hurt? That big one? Those big ones? I can’t remember the specifics. You know, the hurts that stand up and everything in life seems to whirlpool around them. They don’t even exactly hurt anymore, but the fluidity of yourself flows with the feature of them.

Oh, but those passions! Remember that? The roar of things mattering. You grappling for the handles of the machine, needing to handle it right. And then diving into the details, the assemblage of the thing, the parts that put it together and knowing there was a way, must be a way, needed to be a way, to make it work. Society, life, care-giving, the world. It mattered.

Aaaaahhhhh…. But the desire for death. I hope I’m not rekindling that feeling. It was around that time, wasn’t it? Well, it was not only around that time, but you had a time where it was loudest. Maybe I’m wrong about that? I do know that your desire for death was different than mine, coloured differently, driven differently, but the mood of giving up was the same, I think.

I was somewhere, I don’t know where, when you came to understand your body as political. All of it. Every inch. Inside. Outside. It probably shouldn’t be, but it is. Correct me if I’m wrong but you’re still moving between accepting this political aspect as a challenge to meet, and disregarding the whole thing: you have days where you just are.

I know sometimes you wonder if you are missing something, avoiding something, forgetting something. Sometimes you wonder what you are meant to do.

I know sometimes you know. Sometimes you know everything and nothing.

Have I told you: that’s my story, too.

I am not you, I know that. I promise, I’m not comparing my beginning, middle, and where we’re at now with yours. I’m not trying to discount your story by making it about me.

Yet, it’s true.

That’s my story too. 

                                  

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

Tsara Shelton (X.com) 

Book Review: The Way of Men by Jack Donovan

 

 

Even before I became a mother to boys, I was unexplainably curious about what it meant to be a good man. No, that's not quite right. I was curious about what it meant to try to be a good man, to contemplate it and to make choices in pursuit of it, to wrestle with those questions as boys becoming men. 

I don't know why I was so interested in the quest for manhood. I was (and am) a girl. A girl who was (and is) quite happy being a girl. More than happy since my ultimate dream has always been to be a mom.

Eventually I become a mother. And as luck would have it, I am the mother of four boys. Boys who have (and still do) wrestle with the questions of manhood. 

My interest in the subject of being a good man, and being good at being a man, obviously increased.

This book then, The Way of Men, hits that nail on the head.

That's not to say I considered it the answer to my questions, but certainly it explored the theme and explored it well. 

In the preface the author, Jack Donovan, claims the book is his answer to the question: "What is masculinity?"

I think the book does a good job of examining that question. It is straight forward, thought provoking, ballsy, interesting, often funny, and powerful. It offered ideas I don't think I would have imagined on my own. 

By stripping away much of the mess we make in creating civilization Jack Donovan boils things down to their basic elements; to the core of men and the nature of them. I appreciate that he doesn't stop there, though. He admits that he likes - believes in - an element of civilizing and ease of living. He believes in seeking a healthy balance, for the sake of men and masculinity. He explores civilizations and the dangers they often present to The Way of Men; he also offers suggestions and warns us of the harm in not making necessary shifts. 

I like, too, that he separates the ideas of "Being a Good Man" and "Being Good at Being a Man". Throughout my life I have been curious about the plight of being a good man, but it hadn't occurred to me that being a good man and being good at being a man could be two different things. By looking at them separately, I felt invigorated and armed with a clearer way of understanding people.

The Way of Men came to several conclusions I for sure don't agree with (and a few I was devastated by) but it also laid out some well constructed concepts I think are important.

This isn't a book I'm compelled to run around recommending but I wouldn't avoid suggesting it either. 

If it calls to you and you do read it, I recommend reading it with a willingness to consider the ideas presented without prejudice, while also remembering to examine them as ideas, not ultimate truths. 

So much of this book is of value. All of it is of interest and valid. And even though I strongly want to push back on a fair bit of it I also can't deny the necessity of considering it as a whole.

Part of me wishes I had read it when my sons were still small, but part of me is glad I didn't. I'm not confident that the me I was back then would have been aware of the aspects I think need to be reconsidered, re-imagined, or simply thrown out.

Of course, the me I am going to be several years from now will probably have such different things to think about everything, including this book. 

Oh, life. How you unceasingly seem to evolve me. 

 

Thank you for offering me literature that helps me influence that evolution. (Such is The Way of Reading).

Hugs, smiles, and love!

Tsara Shelton (X.com)

Autism Answer: Growing Up Greedy

 

Family portrait

 

“Parenting was my goal, ever since I can remember. I have learned more from teaching my children than I could have ever learned from chasing a dream with fewer people to care for. I am greedy. And so I filled my world with a lot of people to love.” ~Lynette Louise, aka "The Brain Broad"

 

aka my mom. 

 

She really did fill her world with a lot of people to love. 

 

I can confirm this statement of hers. 

 

As one of her children I was not only a witness to mom's active inclusion of people to love, I was not only one of the people she greedily loved, but I was also actively involved in learning to love.

 

When my mom was a little girl she planned her future with confidence: she would be the mother of many children - about twelve, she figured - and she would guide them with such love that her own upbringing would be washed away. There would be no trace of the abuse my mom lived through in the environment she would create for her children. At the time she didn't know anything about the cycle of abuse, but she did know it was not in any way okay to treat a child, a person, the way her mother treated her. And so, she would not. She would not treat anyone in such a way ever. Her love would be such a storm of goodness and fairness that any trace of the name calling and humiliation and beatings of her past would simply drown to death.

 

Mom was young when she had me. She was still young when my brother was born dead. By the time my sister was born my mom was almost twenty. She was twenty-three when she had to have a complete hysterectomy due to an infection. 

 

She had not reached her goal of twelve children, but she was crazy about the two of us she was raising. Always, mom put us first and cared so darn much about how we were treated. My sister and I were lucky little girls and were loved beyond measure. I wish our brother would have lived to be part of it. That love. 

 

But despite mom's best intentions, her own upbringing was insidious. Mom did not know how to love herself the way she so easily loved us. And whether you believe it or not, a certain kind of love for yourself is necessary for a healthy love of others to grow.

And here is the magic of my mom. She is, at her core, a genius who cares about children and outliers. Even as a little girl imagining her future she would see herself loving people who were having a hard time finding love. Not in a savior way, but in a "don't you see they are like me" way. She saw herself in the outliers, the unwanted, the unlovable. As she grew wiser, she saw all of us in everyone. 

 

Mom's biggest challenge was understanding how the rest of us could not see. It was so obvious to her that everyone was capable and everyone deserved to be seen for who they were, not what label they might be given. It was so obvious to her that she just couldn't see how so many of us were blind to it. 

So, the magic of my mom was this: help herself, learn to love herself, while gathering so many others to love.

My mom was fierce in her intention to create a healthy and loving environment. One that would guide us to independence and strength. She was always an example of that strength and always a seeker of her better self. What started as me, mom, and my sister became me, mom, my sister, two more sisters, and four brothers. And then there were a myriad of others who mom allowed into our lives for temporary help and guidance. There were also many she did not. Love means saying no, too. 

But we did have many. I remember a woman from... hmmm, I can't remember... Kenya? ... trying to raise money to bring her young son to Canada. I remember a teenager, a girl about the age of me and my sisters, with physical disabilities I can't quite recall but her body moved different from ours and one of her arms was misshapen. I don't remember her well but I do remember us girls sitting around chatting about the usual teenage girl stuff. And I admit to being surprised that her interests aligned precisely with ours. There was almost a boy from Columbia who we all wrote to and tried to learn a little Spanish for. After most of us kids had grown and only some of us were staying with her for different reasons at different times, there were more extreme cases. Mom was a renowned brain change and behavior expert by then so she helped an addict who no longer wanted to be an addict, she helped autistic people in extreme need.

 

These people willing to accept mom's help (not my siblings, the ones that came later) knew it was a temporary thing, something meant to fuel them with ideas and skills for the forward motion they were struggling to gain footing with. My mom is not the sort to help without a goal. In fact, she would likely see helping without a goal as the opposite of helping.

 

I don't always remember understanding mom's love for children who were unwanted or unloved, and admittedly I didn't always like being expected to learn to believe in everyone's potential and worth, but I did always learn. About others and about myself. 

 

I watched, also, as my mom learned about herself. As my mom grew healthier, stronger, happier, more balanced as a woman. As a mom. 

 

I do believe it is a wonderful idea to plan a certain amount of readiness before gathering people around you to take care of. I do. 

 

I just also believe that as we gather people to love and care for, we are going to realize that we are in need of more. We are going to discover new areas of unreadiness we will do well to examine, to change. 

 

 

“Parenting was my goal, ever since I can remember. I have learned more from teaching my children than I could have ever learned from chasing a dream with fewer people to care for. I am greedy. And so I filled my world with a lot of people to love.” ~Lynette Louise, "The Brain Broad"

 

 

Mom is greedy and fills her world with people to love.

In this way she encourages others to become people who love.

And this helps us become easier to love. 

 

We are not all like my mom. 

Be we are all capable and of value, we are all able to step up and over our own obstacles, and we are all responsible for doing so (this includes asking for help where it is required for forward motion).

I know this because my mom is like my mom. 

And she will not allow me not to know this. 

Not if I don't want to be grounded for a month. :D 

 

 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!! 

Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook)