Honoring the Unique Journey of Each Autistic Individual

Autism is a “spectrum disorder.” It is very aptly named because although there may be several broad core characteristics, each individual is unique, so how autism impacts them is unique too, with varied strengths and struggles.

I remember several years ago chatting with a mom at an autism awareness baseball game. As another mama bear of an autistic child, she was thrilled to meet my then 14-year-old autistic son and me until she found out my son would not be in the autistic support classroom with her son. My son’s “mainstream” education did not meet her criteria of him being “autistic enough” and her entire attitude changed, and she walked away. I never heard from her or spoke to her again.

I was reminded of this moment as I sat at my bestie’s house this week with her and her family. On the spectrum of autism, her teenage son is labeled “severely autistic” and “non-verbal.” Some may qualify that her son is on the “opposite end of the spectrum” as my son because autism impacts her son (and her family) much differently than my son (and our family). As an outsider getting a glimpse into their world, I might see their world as having “bigger” challenges. I need to clarify that this perspective is not because they ever say it, it’s because their son’s autism is unique to him (and them), but assuming that their world, their life, has greater joys or challenges than ours is pure ignorance.

In fact, as we were discussing my son’s return to college and all my fears, anxieties, and heartache that goes with it, her husband looked at me and said, “Wow. That must be really hard for you.” It took me by surprise, but I don’t know why it did, he is an outsider to our family’s autism journey and I was giving him a glimpse inside, a glimpse that looks very different from their journey. He said, “Everything with us is so black and white, you live in a lot of gray.” The perspective this gave me was equally as eye-opening as it was inspiring and it made me go back in time to that other mom who didn’t think my son was “autistic enough.”

It’s not a matter of classrooms, functioning labels, IQs, methods of communication, where one “falls on the spectrum” or living in black and white vs. gray and it’s not even about being an outsider peeking in the window to a life, a family, that looks very different from your own. It’s a matter of seeing each person as an individual, not a collective disorder. Trying to compare or pinpoint where one beautiful human falls on the spectrum of autism is like determining where any of us fall on the spectrum of humanity. For every human, what matters is the support, the love, the understanding, and the acceptance we all need to be precisely us. And it’s about understanding that no person, and no family, is on the same journey as you, so seeing the world only in shades of black, white, or even gray, stops you from seeing the beautiful colors that make every one of us unique and extraordinary.

I wish I would have understood that years ago when that mother walked away from me at the baseball game, and I wish I could see her today and inquire about her uniquely glorious son and share with her how my son is doing as well. I’d like to think she would now see all the colors in both of them that make them each extraordinary, and not take stock in who falls where on a spectrum that is as varied and unique as the beautiful people that spectrum represents.