I’m feeling sad about Nat again, maybe it’s because I was trolled by a commenter in my latest Swami post. Not trolled, exactly, but judged. This person made a jab about moms who “ship their kid off to neglectful institutions so that they can have their freedom.”<\/p>\n
I don’t know for certain if she meant me, because it is not true about me, but the point is, why the hate? Here I was, trying to express my joy with how Nat has blossomed in adulthood. In looking back, I see that for the most part, his growth has made it possible for him to understand the world better, and in turn to feel more comfortable in it. His inner comfort has led to a calmness that allows him more learning. And so, the more he learns, the more he understands, the better he feels, and so on.<\/p>\n
I wanted my readers to know that this has been my observation, and that in fact many of my older autistic friends tell me this with regard to their own lives, and my older mom friends with grown-up autistic kids have found the same thing, regardless of functioning level. And we, in turn, have found a certain measure of equanimity and peace as we age along with our mellowed-out sons.<\/p>\n
My happiness later in life springs from many things, Nat’s growth being one of them. My growth is another factor. Getting older has given me a little bit of perspective about life, as it does with most of us. The trade-off of losing your fresh youth is that you acquire a soothing knowledge.<\/p>\n
I am also happier because my children are turning out nicely. And so has my career. But, yes, some of my happiness comes from having more free time than I used to, because all three of my sons are older and more independent. To my greatest delight and surprise, Nat became more independent when he left home to live in his school residence at 17. He did not “act out” once. There were some nights in the beginning where he asked to sleep at our house, and so we had him home a lot, and I came to visit him all the time during those days. I agonized over that decision for a year, not knowing what he would make of it. Would he think I was “shipping him off?” Or “discarding him like a used bellydance costume,” as another hater once posited.<\/p>\n
I’m agonizing a bit now, too, because of that comment, as stupid as that may be. Don’t all of us worry about the thin shades of truth in any sweeping generalization? I am<\/em> freer now because Nat’s not here. I did<\/em> pick out a place for him to live, the structure and make-up of which was<\/em> somewhat dictated by the state bureaucracy. Does that make me a callous mom? Does that make his house an “institution?” Does the fact that Nat does not live with me mean that he is living in “neglect?”<\/p>\n No. I know that was all sent to me in confusion and anger and the impulsiveness we all find when we hide behind our computers. So easy to wound with the Send button, to draw blood with a faceless email. I’ve done it, too.<\/p>\n I guess what I’m saying now is, life is hard enough. Why go out of your way to hurt people? If my truth doesn’t match yours, you can shrug and move on. Hate just doesn’t help. And I think we are here to love, because we need to perpetuate our species, and we do that by being happy and helping others be happy, too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m feeling sad about Nat again, maybe it’s because I was trolled by a commenter in my latest Swami post. Not trolled, exactly, but judged. This person made a jab about moms who “ship their kid off to neglectful institutions so that they can have their freedom.” I don’t know for certain if she meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-Ls","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2946,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}