Many friends have often told me how they commend me for my attitude and acceptance towards my son's autism. And every time this happens, I respond to them how acceptance is an everyday process for me. It didn't happen overnight. It certainly didn't happen in a blink of an eye or a surge of will. It is an everyday habit, a consistent practice of will, an opening of the heart and mind, a certain fortitude, a decision to let go and let the universe do its work.
This afternoon, I was confronted with something that for the first time, I was speechless, stopped in my tracks and could only reply, "I know and I understand how you must feel." It was a declaration of the reality of autism, its mystery, its incomprehensibility. It was a raw admission of human emotion, human frailty. And it made me ask the question myself, "How do you accept autism and all its reality into your family? How?"
All the research, resources and references read cover to cover could not satisfy the question of why. I am not even talking about the causes of autism. Because the literature is already out there-- genetic vulnerability coupled with environmental elements. I am talking about the real question parents ask the universe, "Why us? Why my child?". Before we even get to the "how" part-- how to deal with it, how to manage our child's behavior, how we'll get through the financial burden of therapy, schooling, doctor's tests and check-ups, we have to confront the universe, and ourselves, with the question, "Why???". And most often than not, we come up with no answers.
Sooner or later, we find out that we have exhausted our mental capacities, our heart and soul from endlessly questioning that our head literally hurts like hell and all our senses dead tired. We find out that there are no understandable answers, no logical reasoning--it simply does not make sense at all. And the insensibility of it all breaks us down, knocks down the walls of our defenses until we are on our knees. What do we do then when we fall down on our knees? We raise our hands as a gesture of surrender to the heavens. This is when the answers come.
I have often relayed to parents, mothers and fathers alike the story of Garret's diagnosis, how we reacted, how I particularly reacted, how my partner responded, how we didn't know what the first step to do was, which professional to approach first, how we had to travel to another island to see qualified doctors, how Garret screamed with all his might during his first plane ride, and most importantly that point where the doctor finally gave the diagnosis. After the diagnosis, I narrated to them how we did what we did-- do all the intervention needed for him, contacting a therapist from another island to travel every week for 1 whole year and how we dutifully followed through with the intervention. Along the lines of narrating to them our story, one question remains unanswered, "What made you accept the truth?" I have no concrete answers for them. It is not a yes or no kind of question after all. "Was there something you did to make the truth easier to swallow?" All I could answer to these questions was, "When the doctors told us, we knew this was it. We had to help our son. We knew right then and there we were going to do everything for him." And it's true, after finding the most reasonable way to have Garret's therapy, the rest was history. So when a parent declared to me this raw admission of truth--" It is so damn hard to accept why my son has autism" statement, it was as if someone just punched me in the face and forced me to recall how truly have I come to accept autism in our lives.
I do have one concrete answer though. Although this does not answer directly the question "why or how?" Here it is: All I know is that in order for any intervention-- therapy, schooling, diagnosis, or whatever intervention there is, to be in working condition, to be effective, in order to see progress and improvement in our children, there has to be some form of acceptance on the part of the parents, even from just one parent to start with. In the end, all the best therapies, therapists and teachers in the world could not even help our children when we ourselves cannot help them. And truly helping our children is rooted down to the very core of our unconditional love for them. To truly help our children is to love them for who they are, what they have. To truly love them is to accept them no matter what.
So on this note I would like to try to answer the question, "How do / did you accept autism into your life?"
I began by looking into my own heart the very source of love for my son. I dug deep, scooped all the raw contents of this fierce emotion that overturns any kind of disorder, this thing called love. I then poured it forth onto my son. I let go of any form of construct, standards, rules and expectations that society and myself had imposed on how my son should be, on how he should live his life. I looked for this deep place of love in my heart and let go. Human as I am, I of course still went through the process of bombarding myself with unanswerable questions. Until I finally raised my arms in surrender. As I let go and let the universe do its work, I prayed to my God. I held steadfast to my faith. All these I practiced everyday, every single day for the past 4 years and I will certainly keep doing this for as long as my son needs me. As to answering the question, "why us, why my son?", the answers unfolded as soon as I began the process of acceptance. As to the answers, there are many, of which I will soon be writing about. For now, what I can answer is how.
I do not claim to be brave. Though what I do, I realize, and as studies have proven how stress levels of autism parents are comparable to those soldiers in combat, what all parents of children of autism do, takes courage and fortitude enough to mobilize an entire cavalry of soldiers, a whole battalion of military men. By no means am I perfect, or have the autism alphabet down to the letter. But I do my best. Even if I fail in some other important areas in my son's life, I make sure that I don't fail in the most important thing of all, everyday, -- accepting my son for who and what he is, a beautiful, beautiful creation of the Universe.
I end this post with this quote:
If we could answer all the "whys" we would not need faith. -Vance Havner-
No comments:
Post a Comment