When you become a mother, you’re handed a script, an invisible one. It’s not written down, but it’s deeply embedded in every holiday commercial, pediatrician’s milestone checklist, Target baby aisle, and Instagram post. You don’t even realize you’ve memorized it until the child in your arms hands you a different one.
When you become the mother of a child with profound autism, that original script doesn’t just fade. It vanishes and it vanishes quickly. Holidays morph. Birthdays hollow. Expectations you never consciously asked for…gone.
I dreamed of my children before they were born. As my belly grew for all three, I envisioned futures: laughter around birthday candles, scribbled Valentine’s cards, whispered secrets about crushes, slumber parties, graduations, team photos in dusty cleats. One by one, those images changed when Milly & Mack grew and who they are emerged. Not because my children aren’t extraordinary but because the world doesn’t have a frame to hold what they are.
All of thos…
