I never knew my dad's parents as they passed away before I was born, but I have many vivid memories of my mom's parents and I witnessed first hand how they treated my mother, even as a grown woman with four kids of her own. Let's just say that I don't have a lot of happy holiday memories, most of which began and/or ended with my mom in tears. It went way beyond typical family bickering, they were cruel and degrading to her.
UNDIAGNOSED
As a person who has also spent most of my life undiagnosed, I know how immensely confusing and difficult it is, but I imagine that it was even moreso for my parents. Mental health and special needs were not a priority, or even acceptable in those days, as people like us were hugely stigmatized and many were hidden away in horrible asylums. To this day, many doctors still encourage parents to institutionalize their neurodivergent children.
It wasn't until a few years after I discovered that I was autistic, that I had an a-ha moment and realized that my parents were also very autistic. I did not know that it could run in the family, but once I started putting two and two together, it became so blatantly obvious. Eureka! Now let the ancestral healing begin!
MY AUTISTIC DAD
My dad, who passed away when I was a teenager, was a painfully quiet and frustrated man. If I had to diagnose him, I would say that he had selective mutism, Asperger's, OCD and PTSD. He also slept a lot, which could have been caused by depression or autistic burnout...or both. His beLoved mother had narcolepsy, so it's very possible that he had a milder case of that, too. I can recall many times when I would hand him something to sign for my school and he would seemingly shut down completely as he was looking at the paper. It was as if he would just turn to stone. And whenever I would ask for help with my homework, he would get very aggravated, so perhaps he was also learning disabled like I am. Dad was also a very caring person. He volunteered at nursing homes, homes for the blind, at the VA hospital and at various festival fundraisers. He truly taught me the importance of volunteering and helping others.
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| Volunteering at the VA |
MY AUTISTIC MOM
My mom, who passed away in 2012, was the opposite of my dad. She was chatty, goofy, funny, animated, childlike and mischievous. And the older she got, the less she masked her autistic personality traits, which often caused people to think that she was drunk, on drugs or in need of psychiatric help. I would diagnose her with Asperger's, ADHD, PTSD, bipolar or other manic disorder, and severe depression. I think mom would have actually been really thrilled to discover that she was autistic because she had such a big heart for anyone who was different, or who, "marched to the beat of their own drummer", as she would say. My three siblings and I never had children of our own, so mom didn't have any biological grandkids, but she did get to be a step-grandmother to my brother's autistic stepson, and they adored each other. They really had a special connection and seemed to speak each other's language. Now we know why, don't we! Mom Loved people and always wanted to help anyone. She loathed racism and other forms of bigotry or discrimination and she always tried to stand for what was right, even if she was the only one standing. I think if she didn't choose to go the housewife route in the 1960s, she would have been a political activist of some sort.
MY AUTISTIC SIBLINGS
I am the youngest of four kids and I was born in the late 1970s. Myself and two of my siblings were all late-diagnosed in our 40s and 50s, and our undiagnosed eldest sibling is most likely neurodivergent, also. It truly does run in our family. Growing up in the '70s and '80s, autism was only briefly mentioned in the 1988 film, Rainman. There were no learning disability diagnoses or special ed classes for us in school, and many of us old school aspies were just labeled as shy, quiet, lazy, annoying and weird. My siblings excelled academically, but I struggled so much in school, so even my own family labelled me as "dumb" and "lazy" at times. I actually Love learning, but not on standard, neurotypical terms. My brain just does not compute in that atmosphere, and it only took me forty years to realize that that's totally okay.
The older I get, the more I can understand and empathize with my mom and dad. I can honestly say that they were not good parents, but they were good people with a lot of undiagnosed and unresolved issues. I chose not to have my own kids because I know how extremely overwhelming, overstimulating and difficult that it would be for me personally. When my parents got married in the 1960s, there was a lot more pressure to have kids than there was in my generation, and although no child deserves to be abused or neglected, I fully understand the emotional impact of autistic burnout and PTSD, so I definitely feel for any autistic person raising a whole human being.
Finding out that I was autistic at age 40 was a huge relief for me and it answered so many questions. I only wish that my parents could have experienced similar revelations about themselves at some point. Neither of them had any proper closure in their lives except for the unsolicited forgiveness that often comes during terminal illness, absent of all apology or physical presence. They had to create their own closure with their trauma, just like they had to create their own reasoning as to why they always felt so different from everyone else. Why they were treated differently. Why they always felt so gravely misunderstood, for that was truly the worst part of not knowing that I was autistic for 40 long years.
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