Because I want to contribute to our family, I value work. Even if I weren’t married with children, I would want to be employed and take care of myself financially. However, the emotional need to be productive often runs up against my physical limitations. If I could earn a living sitting…
Category: Relationships
Work, school, family… they are all about relationships.
Taking on too much at work or in school is something I hear other autistics admit to doing. Add the ADHD many of us have and it’s a potential disaster in the making. We take on more than we can realistically manage, trying to prove our value while setting ourselves…
Podcast 0113; Season 7, Episode 6; 17 May 2024 Note: Originally recorded 14 June 2023 About Bliss Road: In this sometimes funny, often devastating memoir, Martha Engber describes the arduous journey toward discovering the invisible roadblock that ran her life off course: her psychological distress is the result of being…
April brings “Autism {fill in the blank}” day and month. Is it “Autism Awareness,” “Autism Acceptance,” or something else? I don’t have the time or energy to care. Each year, I rant about the month. Most people are “aware” of autism, though I question if that awareness helps anyone. My…
February 2024 is almost over and I haven’t managed to release a podcast episode with a guest since October 2023, nearly four months ago. The best I could do was a quick podcast on how busy we are, which I recorded in December out of a sense of guilt and…
I spent Christmas 2023 at home alone. Susan, Leigh, and Anne are in California, visiting family. My anxiety spikes when I’m alone. I worry about all the things that might go wrong because, too often, things have gone wrong while Susan and I were apart. From flooding basements, kidney stones, and…
Podcast 0111; Season 07, Episode 04; 4 December 2023 Our family is tired — exhausted — but we are well. The first half of this school year has gone smoothly, though everyone is extremely busy. We’re so busy that the blog and podcast had to be set aside, much as…
Podcast 0110; Season 7, Episode 3; 25 October 2023 David Villec is the neurodiverse father of Tiger, a 10-year-old autistic savant. Dave discusses his personal challenges and those of Tiger. The Autistic Tiger is 10-year-old Tiger Villec and his namesake character, also known as “TAT.” Tiger is a world-renowned artist…
As we approach the last week of September 2023, I can reflect on the return to school for the girls and me, declaring that survival mode exhausts the entire family. Yes, we’re in survival mode, and it’s a lot like hanging on to a rope suspended above a dark, bottomless…
Podcast 0109; Season 7, Episode 2; 29 August 2023 How can parents support their disabled children into adulthood? Will our children find meaningful places in society? Sadly, workplaces don’t always accommodate differences. Mark Lyons and his wife Sally are former teachers. With their son Samuel, they operate SammySocksEtc, an online…