India

Fellow mom from Whitter on Autism pointed me in the direction of this moving post from another fellow mom.

There are things that you realize in your dealings with your children that you just wouldn’t see and wouldn’t know if they weren’t special needs. You see traits in your children that you would never have had an opportunity to see to any extent were they not special needs. With my peanut Gracie, it is so often how she proves to me again and again the flexibility of her soul and her body. While a tumble from her irregulated gait may put my heart in my throat, it is liberating to see her get up (sans tears) again and again. It is soothing to see her try to poke her finger, herself, for FUN. What’s up with that? I think it is great, because I am seeing an aspect of her personality that is gorgeous and strong and adaptive and beautiful. With Sandis, he tickles me with his off-the-wall observations and under and sometimes over generalization of practically everything. His ingenuity touches my heart in ways that I never imagined.

I have not limited my grief. I have allowed myself to grieve for what I wanted for my children initially. And occasionally I allow myself to relapse into that grief. Because, yes, things ARE different than I ever every expected. My children are not what I expected and in many ways not what I hoped. Is that terrible to say? I don’t think so. On the flip side, my children have given me joys in ways that I could have never anticipated. It is these joys that lend light and fortune to my everydays. These joys are the unique joys of special needs parenting. It’s funny though because they are joys that are shared with everyparent, not just specialneedsparents. They just look different. At first they are undiscernable, but later we figure it out. Those same parent loves, parent prides, parent joys. Just different.

And that is to be expected.