Autism Parenting: The Brutal, Beautiful Power of Beginning Again

On motherhood, ego, surrender, and the holy act of starting over.

A few years ago, I did something wild and crazy. Or at least, it seemed that way.

But what I’ve learned since is this: it wasn’t wild or crazy at all.

We live in a world that idolizes the illusion of knowing — of progress, of “supposed to bes.” A world where noise is confused for certainty. And yet, the only way to truly hear what life is asking of us is to get quiet. Quiet enough to hear the whisper that might change everything.

For me, that whisper said:
Begin again.

I didn’t want to be part of that club: The "begin again-ers." I didn’t volunteer. I thought I’d earned my stripes. I was a second-time mom. I knew things. I had graduated from the chaos of first-time motherhood and stepped into the stability of survival, turned to thriving. Two daughters. A stride. A rhythm.

“Thank God,” I would think. “I’m not a new mom anymore.”
That first round? That was brutal. I missed out on a lot of happiness as it took me baseline and had me oscillating between such intense love and such intense confusion. But look at me now - confident, capable, rising in the invisible ranks of mothers who are doing it. Mothers who are grooming, guiding, and growing.

I was living. I thought I had arrived.

The universe — God — life — said otherwise.

There was a moment (a very very very small window of a brief, quiet one) where everything seemed blissful. Milly was under 3 months old, and I hadn’t yet been asked to hear her with my heart, to listen with my eyes, to mother in a way that required me to unlearn everything.

But that moment was short-lived.