Simple

Dear Addie,

I am beginning to sound like a broken record here, but I do not think I would ever tell anyone this journey has been easy. Endless doctor's appointments, meltdowns, therapy, communication, sensory issues, schooling, or lack thereof, and obsessive compulsion for what some would see as the oddest of things, and those are just some of the things you go through. As parents raising someone with autism, our heart is on display 24-7, and everyone has a suggestion or an opinion on how to do some of the mundane, simple things we struggle with – take it or leave it, the floodgates are open, that is why it is hard not to take things personally, because it is, well, personal. As your parents, Addie, our number one goal is to ensure you live a happy and meaningful life. The road, however, to get there isn't always rainbows and unicorns, so sometimes that will mean holding your hand through some dark phases of life to get there. If I could write a book for new parents entering this journey, chapter two, right behind chapter one of "Embrace Predictably Unpredictable," would be "To Always Keep Things In Perspective," because when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. Still, those dark times don't last forever, they will come and go, and sometimes when we take a step back and look at the big picture, it's just simple. Sometimes the most complex version of simple you can imagine via decoding or emotionally, but simple.

Allow me to explain.

Let's take decoding communication, for example. Elephants make you feel very sad and anxious. Addie, when you feel sad about something, you yell, "Elephant!" It is an identifiable object that makes you feel that of the emotion, unlike the word of emotion itself. Identifying the emotion as a picture makes more sense to you. Decoding your thought process was (and is) challenging, but after a while, we realized it's kind of like a picture book. Elephant = sad. Check. Another example is you love Strawberry Starburst, but nothing about it looks like a strawberry or any star bursting or not, so you refer to them as "pink squares," color, shape, and scene. Simple.

But sometimes I am reminded of the simplicity of things when I least expect it, like at Target, because why wouldn't it be Target?

There we were, standing in the toddler toy aisle. At 5'9", you were rocking large noise-canceling headphones and mesmerized by the bright-colored Fisher-Price learning toys. At almost 13 years old, we are still here. It is a whiplash moment emotionally because sometimes it makes me sad to be here, where it's a heavy reminder of how we have stalled compared to your peers. When these thoughts creep in, envy can quickly steal your joy if you let it. Then I remember you're not asking for an iPhone, a new laptop, or Taylor Swift tickets, but something that sings the alphabet and teaches you about shapes and animals rather. It's all simple, and you are nothing but happy here. You know the goal we set out to achieve - happiness.

Addie, I don't think anyone can quite prepare you for a journey through autism, as it's a profoundly individualized experience, but maybe being unprepared and throwing away expectations gives us a new vision of life we may not have seen otherwise? Maybe by not overthinking how we think things should be is how we lose the complexity of all this and see it's simplicity instead. Maybe.

Thank you, baby girl, for the perspective you have given us thus far on so many things in life. We love you beyond measure.

Love,

Mom