I have been writing back and forth with several mothers, some who found me through the CNN article, others I’ve known a while, through one path or another.
E has a child in a residential educational facility too — her child has been there 3 years now. We write to one another of how it feels. We hold one another up. Recently, I wrote to her:
I am beginning to understand that there are a lot of us. Who have done this thing. Who feel this way. Who struggle with mixed emotions – first one, then the other…feeling the guilt and the freedom together, a strange mix of relief and grief. This is all just swept under the rug. No one talks about it, acknowledges it, does anything about it. I’ve had enough of that. So many families struggle and are in pain.
I want to try to write a book.
Who wants to read a book when there’s no happy ending? friend E e-mailed me when I suggested this.
I thought about all the books I have loved that did not have what most would consider happy endings: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Of Mice and Men. The Bridge to Terabithia. The Awakening. The Giver (maybe; that one’s left open to interpretation). Every Shakespeare tragedy. Alas Babylon. And on and on.
So I wrote back to her: Yes. We can compel them to create one! And she immediately offered me her support and help. Then I thought of the book, The Help – how Skeeter compiled all the stories of the women into a book. Should I do it that way?
I think we need to have a voice. There are a lot of people who need help. Maybe the local autism society can help me figure out how to go about increasing awareness of the ‘behaviorally dangerous’ end of the spectrum. The rest of us.
Maybe they could call us the prism of the spectrum of autism. What should be a clear view through transparent glass, fractured into bits and pieces of what is really there, all the while shooting beams of incredible color in every direction. Thrown and shattered, though, the prism’s really fucking sharp. Sharp like people don’t know. Sharp that would shock them all.
The Never Normal 
Great idea Amy. Let me know if I can help.
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You have to write a book, Amy. It will help so many people. It would be amazing. You have the tools to do it effectively as well which many people don’t have. I hope you find the time and support to do it.
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I definitely think you should write this book, weaving together the feelings and thoughts of all the mothers you know whose children are on the “behaviorally dangerous” end of the autism spectrum into a tapestry that only you women can create. About that “happy ending,” it certainly won’t be a traditionally happy one, like all the sappy “and they got married and lived happily ever after” 19th century endings. But you don’t know what the ending of your book will be, because you haven’t yet begun the beginning. Begin that beginning!
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