Hope is Vested in Humanity

I've been looking for a photograph for the piece that will be published next year. It is a piece about Adam, autism, family life. I called it "The Perfect Child." I like this photograph. It was taken in the throes of worry, when Adam was newly diagnosed; when clinicians and psychologists consumed us in their leather couches, saying um hum, and scratching their pens against lined paper, peering at Adam from behind dark rimmed glasses. I remember feeling angry at them. How dare they view my first and only beautiful child as a pathology? I remember hiring and firing so many therapists and clinicians who came into our home -- our door might as well been revolving.

This photo brings me back to this time when I was worried, angry, confused. It reminds me of all the terrifying things I saw, the films of autistic people screaming, being tugged by therapists. Yes, there are many movies like those.

Soon, The Autism Acceptance Project will release its video. It was made to give people dignity, others hope. In a world where there is little, where people put all their stakes in cures, pills and perfection, we need to remind ourselves that in the end, hope is not vested in cures, it is vested in humanity.