My lack of filters

Friday I woke up with a sense over horrible dread. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Earlier in the week we heard some news of a close family member being diagnosed with cancer and that did shake me a bit. But then I got my footing back and carried on as usual. I still felt sadness but much less anxiety. I wondered if the anxiety was slipping back in again or if something terrible was about to happen. I mentioned it to my friend that I was feeling a horrible sense of dread. I said I'd pray on it. She agreed,

"Remember to put your trust in God."

I went about my day as Nate had an appointment for cranial sacral therapy. Then the news of a shooting in Newtown crept in. I pushed it aside telling myself I couldn't deal with this kind of stuff right now. It wasn't helping with my horrible dread. At first it was just one dead so I shoved it away and still wondered what this dreadful feeling was about.

The news got worse. Then it occurred to me that maybe this was the terrible thing. I mentioned it to my friend and she concurred and told me to shield myself from it. She knows of my oversensitivity to horrible things that go on in the world and seems to catch me when I obsess about these things before I even realize what I'm doing.

But there was no escaping it. This was really something horrible. The source of my dread was found. I felt like giving up on the world. I waited anxiously for the kids to get out of school. The post about gun control trickled in. Everybody reacting to such earth shattering news in their own way. I didn't look at news articles. I didn't search anything out. But the posts from Facebook kept coming in. She told me to step away from Facebook.

She knows about my lack of filters when bad things happen.

I'll obsess about it. Read everything about it. Cry. Visualize the event. Have moments of dread where I feel the terror of what happened. See the parents and their world crashing down. My filters don't work. I know I wasn't alone in feeling the impact of the tragedy. But I know I tend to be a lot more obsessive than the average person. I've learned to not look at the articles. But then the pictures of the children started showing up on Facebook. My friend was right. I needed to just turn everything off.

Last night I was talking with my husband. I told him I was sad. He asked why, kind of surprised. I mentioned the recent tragic events and sad news. I said I just couldn't take it. It's too much. He reminded me about my filters. That I needed to put them up.

"Bad things happen all the time. They're always happening and if you think about every one you'll go insane. Probably the reason why some people do go insane."

Yes, he's right. Probably why people in the military are struggling with severe depression and suicide. Bad things happen and we are mostly helpless. It can make you want to give up on life.

I thought of Nate and how him and I are so similar. We both have a tendency to shut down and want to channel ourselves into some kind of repetitive activity. He can't shut off his brain from all the stimuli happening around him. I can't shut off my brain from all the evils of this world. Perhaps in that sense there's the genetic susceptibility. We're both very sensitive people. And technology is breaking down our natural filters. Before it was just what was on the TV for a few hours in the day. Now the news is 24/7. Turn off the t.v. and turn on the internet. Innocently check your Facebook and there it is. Faces of beautiful babies now gone from this world.

The lesson I'm starting to learn is I still want to be connected to the world in some way and the bad things will continue to happen and I still must be connected. I can't shut off even if it hurts too much.

We want to stay connected but then we open ourselves up to all kinds of things where we have no filters to stop it.

With Nate, I'm having to rethink how I connect in this world. I'm a recluse that doesn't like to do social things but I've made my world very small. Nate is teaching me to not let our lack of filters to stop us from experiencing everything. We both need to learn to integrate ourselves into the outside worlds.

The world is scary and there is much evil. We don't have a lot of control over it. But life goes on and must be lived.

In one of my sessions with my homeopath, I was visualizing that I was in a tunnel slide and it was rough. I was feeling it but not experiencing it. It was a strange realization. I've shut myself off but still feel things anyway. My lack of filters doesn't stop things from coming in no matter how hard I try to shut myself off.

I'm getting the sense that as I try and get out more and immerse myself into life and living that the world will open up for Nate as well.

One important gift I've received from Nate is that much of his healing is intertwined with my own healing. I must heal myself as I try and heal him.

My heart is still broken with the recent tragedy and my prayers go out to everyone affected by it. May God grant eternal joy to the victims and mercy to the killer.

I'm still here

Anyone out there? I wrote one post when I started this blog months ago. Then I left it. Now I'm back. So where to begin?
Nate was a normal developing happy baby. He was a head in his milestones. Then around 15 months, something happened. You'll hear this a lot with parents of children on the spectrum. SOMETHING HAPPENED. I've even seen Jenny McCarthy do some speech where she asks the crowd of forlorned parents of ailing ASD children,

"How many of you had a normal developing child and then something happened?"

Now something is happening to 1 in 88 children. Something is happening to 1 in 54 boys. Something keeps happening. I don't know what exactly happened. I have my suspicions.  At Nate's 15 month check up he got his round of shots including the infamous MMR. Then 2 days later he got the stomach flu. His older sisters got it too. It was a pretty bad one. They actually seemed to get it worse than he did. Nonetheless, things shifted. I can't explain what though. It was a sea change.

Gradually, he stopped getting new words and the words he had stopped being said. At 18 months, his next check up, the pediatrician said he was behind even for a boy who had two older sisters who did all the talking. The concern started creeping in. I mentioned the shots and not being sure about giving him another round and my pediatrician gave me a big ol' lecture that it wasn't that and here's a flyer swearing up and down that it wasn't the shots and on and on. She was probably tired of having to explain to me every time I brought my kids in and it was time for shots that I would try and talk myself out of letting them get them. She was used to hearing me raising these concerns only to then quickly shoot me down and talk me into taking the plunge and allowing them to jab my poor babies with these shots that were supposed to "protect" them.

I wish I had been stronger. But I'm not a very confrontational person. I avoid it. And I just really didn't have a leg to stand on. She's the doctor. She knows. I'm just an irrational mom who needed to be talked down. So they all got their shots. The older two didn't seem to have any problems so o.k. Give them the flippin' shots. (Normally, I'd insert the real naughty word there but I'll try to keep it clean when I write...)

Was it the shots alone? I don't think it was one shot. But I do think the shots contributed. They just get so many so fast. I'm not against vaccines. When I brought my son in as a tiny baby, I asked about spacing out the shots over a longer period of time. But guess what? I was shot down and given a lecture by my pediatrician. She mentioned the studies. I asked if they were paid for by big Pharma. No, no, no... I remember how she didn't actually look me in the eye when she said that...

Now years later, the question of why so many shots in such a short period of time has been answered.  It turns out they do that so they can be sure us dumb parents follow through on making sure they get every shot because if they spaced them out they think us dumbass parents wouldn't follow through on making sure they got them all by the time they were 10 or so. They only think we give a shit about our kids when they're under 2 or something and the CDC wants to make sure to get them in while we give a shit about our kids. Thanks CDC for finally explaining to everyone why you inject the shit out of these kids in the first two years of life. (Sorry, there goes my clean writing...)

So, that's my little bit of run down on what happened to my son. It's a bit of a rant and I'm sorry for that.  It's hard not to get angry when thinking of a whole generation kids that may not be productive members of society. I pray that this won't continue to be the case. Unfortunately, things usually need to get worse before they get better and I'm not sure when we're going to bottom out. I'm doing everything I can to undo the damage that was done to my son. I'm seeing results too. I'll share what I'm doing next time. Because I really do mean for this blog to be about hope. That is my fuel and there's plenty of negative autism blogs out there. I won't lie. Autism SUCKS! I don't even know if you can call it that. This is different. This epidemic just doesn't jive with the label "Autism." But they like labels and they don't want to admit something is very wrong and it's got nothing to do with genetics.

If it were genetics, these kids wouldn't be recovering. They are. More and more are recovering for those who refuse to accept this label and accept that their kids were born like this. We all know we had perfectly healthy children coming into this world and the SOMETHING HAPPENED. We refuse to sit back and let that SOMETHING define our kids.

The Reluctant Mother

Not for me God. I don't want that. I'll just have the two healthy children that are here and not tempt fate by having any more. Because I know that with all the autism diagnosis' increasing, I'll end up with one. So, no thanks. I'm done having kids. 

But God had other plans. I have this horrible habit of worrying about things that happen before they happen and then they happen anyway. The worrying doesn't make it go away. It doesn't protect me. I found myself pregnant with our third child and all I did was worry. I worried that I'd have postpartum depression again. I worried something would be wrong. I worried that I'd have even less time for myself. I worried he'd have autism. All these things happened. My worrying didn't stop it. So what's the point of worrying? I think worrying is overrated and pointless now. But I still worry and it sucks.

Nate came into the world March 18th, 2009. He was healthy and gorgeous. He was the best birth of the three. The shortest labor and delivery. He was perfect. As with most kids on the spectrum, he was developing perfectly, hitting his milestones on time or ahead of schedule. I was hesitant to give him vaccines but my doctor guilt tripped me and I was weak and caved. I'm not a very confrontational person and I don't like to upset people so I was an easy target and fell like a house of cards.

My friend's daughter was diagnosed with autism several years before and while she was doing great, I witnessed the hell on earth that my friend went through and ultimately the dissolution of her marriage. So I told God,
"Not me. I'm not having another child. I have two healthy neurotypical children and I'm not tempting fate." So when I found myself pregnant and discussed my fears with her she told me,
"God will give you the grace to handle it if that's what God decides you need."

She was right that He did give me the grace to handle it. He did carry me through and it's no accident that Nate is here. I always got the sense that God had a specific purpose for him and for me. He has a very specific plan. Nate is special and has a special purpose here on earth. I'm not sure what that is yet but I know it will be significant.

Today Nate is 3 years old. He's nonverbal. This blog is about finding him again. I felt like he got lost after his 15 month vaccination. It happened slowly and subtly. He's always been a happy kid but the change transformed his happiness coming out of his own little world. He gradually turned inward and lost the words he had. He became more disconnected and not fully present. I imagine his recovery will be the same way. Slow, subtle and gradual. I'll talk more about what we're doing for him in the future. I know we'll get there and we are seeing good things. So know this my dear readers. This is a place of hope. If your child is newly diagnosed, I hope you'll come a long on this journey with me so you can see there's much to be hopeful for. It isn't the dark world I thought it would be. I've gained so much from this journey and Nate has too. I hope the same for every child and parent that are on this difficult journey. Come along with me and lets hope together.