Why must we remember their histories...and ours?

A lesson in the connection of struggles.

Connections.

So many connections, so many layers. And way too many of you would look at me with anger because I demand that I, my children, and everyone else be looked at as whole and not pieces of themselves.

But the issue that the autistic community would appear to have, especially within a social media atmosphere is that everything about a person, themselves, they have centered around one identity. One part of themselves they wholeheartedly claim as the defining force of their existence.

I am not here to argue one’s identity. That’s personal. That is individualistic. But your single-minded focus has laid boulders at my feet, and that of my children’s…you block our way. So, you have tasked me with the responsibility of either breaking this boulder or removing it from our path. You make this work harder. And it doesn’t have to be.

Many of your hands grip firmly onto singular identities. Generally, your primary identity, the one the world sees you and knows you as. The one they get to know first without knowing anything else about you, is extremely dominant and extremely privileged. You may carry other identities that cause you unnecessary and unjust struggle, harm, and pain…but you hold a dominance and privilege that many others with whom you share an identity (or two) with, do not.

But our intersections do not begin and end with identity, they also involve our circumstances, our situations, our histories, our contexts…

All of which are heavily influenced by our identities as well as our privilege.

I am no longer in the business of concerning myself with whether you are aware of your privilege or not. Only that you wield it regardless.

Your advocacy is coated in whiteness. And white supremacy.

When I wrote in a previous share that my feelings on speech therapy, its practitioners, and its governing body, I wrote that it was part of a larger thing; that what my son faces, who he is, how his autism presents, and this community’s advocacy disregards what it is that he requires and bucks his family’s efforts to help him navigate this world.

When I wrote that “alternative” therapies and services this ONLINE community screams at us to utilize instead of the ones they would shout about as being harmful and abusive…are also harmful and abusive and will continue to be as such because they operate within an oppressive society that places certain bodies on certain levels and leverages privilege as currency.

There’s nothing we can do that will not involve some kind of harm. We attempt to mitigate the harm, but we are always at risk for it.

So, when I wrote (as I have many times before) that my son was not helped by the “alternatives” being pushed down my throat, I meant that. With my whole being.

When he could access these alternatives (many we cannot access due to a variety of perceptual as well as structural barriers), he was often discharged after a few weeks or months because “he didn’t make any progress” or “his behaviors were beyond their skill set” or that they would “be willing to treat him if he were also in an ABA program”

…I could do this all day.

And this was from your OTs, PTs, and your STs. Oh, and also hippotherapy and sensory integration therapies…

What connects our experiences with speech therapy I mentioned in previous posts to the posts I have mentioned in the past about ABA was that y’all would rather push my son into the arms of a field who didn’t treat him any better than you claimed ABA would have, instead of acknowledging that my son’s autism is such a whole body experience for him that he is often not served by “traditional” methods. You would need an open mind, patience, a kind heart, and a willingness to see him and how he responds to the world with his whole self, not pieces.

The ones who would admonish families for choosing something they would not choose for themselves do not think about autism impacts those like my son, those like me, or our families. They don’t think about the systems we have to navigate, the skin we are in, the circumstances we face, not what autism looks like within these bodies of ours.

One look at my son…one glance was often all it took, for 14 therapists of the 33 (yes, I’ve kept track) to tell us they could not help my son. And they could not help us.

This community, one I love but will absolutely criticize if it stands in the way of what my children require, does its absolute best to give us the most Oscar worthy performances when it comes to advocacy. However, it’s superficial, no real depth, no nuance, no substance.

Plastic play food. Looks pretty but you can’t eat it. Can’t do nothing with it, but place it on unstable, tables so that you won’t notice the wobble.

I have no intention of giving life to the noise, far too many thrive in conflict. That’s what they would like for me to do. I learned this some time ago.

It’s all so very connected. And everything I share connects to something else. I have spent years in these spaces being told I am “pro-parent” (makes no sense cause to me the opposite would be anti-parent and why would I be that) or that I am pro-ABA. They assign these labels to me because they don’t know what to do with the complexities of my existence. Of my children’s. So, it’s easy to dismiss the entirety of what I share if you only deliberately misunderstand a portion of it.

The discussion is dominated by white folks, and they have yet to figure out how to address issues that are specific to those who live outside of whiteness. Truthfully, they don’t have to acknowledge what we go through. Their lives aren’t peripheral to ours as ours is to theirs. They don’t have to document nor name our pain. And for the most part, they do not concern themselves with our grievances.

I am surrounded by disability imagery and content governed by whiteness that dictates they have found our path to liberation, and it is paved with what they feel to be true for THEIR lives. I feel as though they want to know a world in which there is no struggle. And to desire such a world would mean they will disregard the diversity of our human experiences. They understand struggle through the lens of their limited experiences. And carry no interest in ours.

They write books on this. Their online platforms are big on this. Their activism stands on top of it.

But how do they forget that they stand atop our ancestors? That our Black and Brown bodies lead their revolutions. We are the pulse of their movements. When they tell us our stories do not matter, that our words complicate their movements, and our grievances are in opposition to what they feel liberates us, how do they not know that our bodies carry far too much? That the words they use, the terminology they fumble came from the tongues of our people?

Why are we tasked with remembering our history and theirs?