Susan Senator

I have found the book I want to read next: Reasonable People by Ralph Savarese. Read this bit from his website and you, too, may feel the same.

Ralph and his wife Emily, an autism expert, adopted DJ, an abused autistic boy, when he was six. Ralph’s writing about the adoption alone takes my breath away. “We were not infertile,” he says, trying to explain to the multitudes of people who could not believe anyone would do such a thing. Nor are they saints or martyrs. Nor were they trying to avoid adopting a child of a different race. It was simply that they had a connection with DJ, from Emily’s work, and he needed them as much as they needed him.

My heart leaped when I read this. This, that he describes in his essay, is exactly how I feel. You and your child connect. It is that simple. God, goodness, hope, foolish optimism — whatever you may call it — are all involved in this dynamic. But it is through our own work (and, of course, God, or good luck, energy, magic, dedication, whatever else) that we make something positive of what we end up with.

You reap what you sow, but it takes a particular kind of wisdom to actually feast on what you’ve harvested.