I’ve been thinking lately about this army that I’ve been part of for almost eleven years. The first few years I was fighting the autism itself, grasping at therapies and treatments when there wasn’t much out there, as far as resources and current information. And, in my state of shock, I was referred to an excellent agency called Child Development Services. They had current information. They helped my son, those speech therapists, occupational therapists, behavior consultants, and autism specialists.  In my mind we were fighting the autism. I wanted things to get back to normal.

Then I realized I had to find a new normal. I realized that my son wasn’t going to “grow out of it.” He would progress, he would slowly, painstakingly learn to talk, he would gradually learn to filter the sensory input that often caused him to scream and writhe in public. And my fight changed a bit. I tried to mainstream my son, and I came to feel like I was fighting the school district. He had an educational assistant (two, sometimes); we had weekly meetings during which his teacher actually rolled her eyes when discussing my son; I came to the school and found him running around the halls aimlessly. This was not a new normal that I could live with, so we switched schools. Again.

Now I’ve accepted that the fight will continue indefinitely, but it continues to change. Now that I’m homeschooling, I don’t feel like I’m fighting the school district, although I should have. In the space of his last six weeks there, they suspended my autistic son twice, for behavior that he could not control. Part of me wishes I had taken them to court, but I didn’t have the time or the energy, really. And my younger son had to still be enrolled in that district, to stay with his friends. I had to consider his needs as well.

We are all still fighting. We all have our own crosses to bear. I once read or heard an analogy that if all the people in the world were lined up next to each other, and we could put all our problems in a suitcase and set it in front of us and then trade suitcases with someone else, in the end we would pick up our own suitcase and carry on with that. Some of us are fighting the autism, some of us are fighting the school district, and some of us are fighting the ignorant public, trying to find a place in it for our kids. A place of acceptance and a place of dignity.

So here’s to all of us who pick up our own damn suitcase every day and continue on. We may not have enlisted in this army, but we believe in the cause, and we’ll keep fighting.