Maybe you noticed, maybe you missed it. Something is different on my website. The puzzle piece is gone. Yeah, it was only like a glass puzzle piece — see-through and benign — but still. A marker for those looking to think about autism. It was there for the last twelve years, since the very beginning of my blog.<\/p>\n
This symbol was to show people that this was an autism blog, even though I have always insisted it was simply my<\/em> blog. I would write about anything I wanted. Bellydance, love, bike rides, writing, teaching. My two other sons, Max and Ben. But I don’t write about any of that all that much, it turns out. It pretty much is an autism blog. I don’t feel that I’m allowed to write about Max and Ben, really. It is embarrassing having them (maybe) see how I feel about them. I still do it, though. I need to. But I feel like I have to temper such declarations of motherlove, or be careful disclosing anything too much their own. I post on Facebook how I feel about them, do the usual brags we all do on Facebook, little sentences couched in humble, seemingly-innocent wrapping. Soften the blow of our happy lives with that cushioning disclaimer of “I don’t mean to brag but look at this beautiful\/great\/funny\/serious\/smart thing I did\/found\/thought of\/hate\/love.”<\/p>\n (I really hate Facebook. But I truly see its benefits. I’m gonna use it for what it’s best at. But that is not what this blog post is about.)<\/p>\n So why can I write about Nat? Well, I just feel that I can. Why? Because he probably won’t ever know. How shitty is that? Welcome to my shitty blog, which is a bit about autism and all my feelings about it. It just is. So I’m redressing this somewhat by at least no longer claiming so falsely that autism is a puzzle, that my oldest son is a question mark. You know what the question mark is in this life? EVERYONE. I don’t understand why people do what they do, so why should Nat? Everyone else has developed layers and layers under which they can hide their confusion, their mixed feelings. I guess Nat has developed his “self-talk” as his layer, as well as a comfort. But he’s not to be looked at, looked down upon, as a puzzle! That is just so offensive.<\/p>\n It’s the rest of us who are puzzles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maybe you noticed, maybe you missed it. Something is different on my website. The puzzle piece is gone. Yeah, it was only like a glass puzzle piece — see-through and benign — but still. A marker for those looking to think about autism. It was there for the last twelve years, since the very beginning […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4708","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\/sSTth-4708","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4708","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=4708"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4716,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4708\/revisions\/4716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em><\/p>\n