Brave Face

When T.J. was little, we had all these goals for when he was done with high school. It felt so far away.

We are here. We are on the edge of it.

In some ways we are ahead of the game, but in many more ways it is not the shiny success story I had my heart set on.

We are realizing that we have to readjust our ideas of "success".

It's a lot to wrap our heads and hearts around. He is amazing - he is the best T.J. he can be - and I am so proud of him.

But I am not proud of me, at all. I didn't set proper expectations in my own head, for all these years. I pushed a lot under the rug and created a much more "typical" picture of where we would be.  

But that's not reality - it never was.

And that's what I now have to reconcile with. It's selfish of me to feel badly, but it's real. And I've always been real here, if nothing else.

I won't feel badly for long, there is no time for it. But there it is. I will keep plowing ahead, and together we will find what's next for our amazing boy, and what is best for him.

Not my DREAM of what I want for him, but what his REALITY is.

I always said to fellow autism parents, "don't look too far ahead. Don't put your expectations of what you want on your kid, they will show you the way bit by bit."

I wish I had listened to my own advice. Brave face. Here we go.