This I Believe

" And we are not perfect.  We say the wrong thing.  We grow and we change and the words we spoke in the past are words of which we now repent, but that is the nature of sanctification and there is no one exempt from that process."  -Fabs Harford

I believe that words are important.  I believe that what we say and what we write can affect people, and it is our choice to encourage and build people up, or tear others down with our negativity.  So often, as I was growing up, my parents would admonish me to THINK before I spoke, usually as a follow-up to something insensitive or inappropriate that had just come out of my mouth.  I would sigh in exasperation, because the challenge to evaluate all spoken words before enunciating them, and discarding the unnecessary ones, seemed too much for me.  I didn't want to stop long enough to consider my words, I wanted to get them out, to share them with others and join in.  People gave me labels: I was cynical, sarcastic, jaded.

I often wrote as I grew up, I filled notebooks with thoughts and observations.  I still wonder if anyone is ever going to read those words or if they will get thrown away at some point, without being seen by the world.  I want to have influence, I want to share my mind and my feelings, but I lack the confidence that I have anything worth saying.  Then I started a blog.  I began not knowing what to write, and the first year I think I wrote 3 entries.  My husband was the only one to read them.  The next year I posted just once. 

It was surreal to find myself, this lover of words, the mother of a non-verbal child.  I yearned for the day I would hear him speak, when we could converse and share our words and learn more about each other.  It didn't come.  The doctors and the speech therapists and the educators all told me the same word: autism.  They gave other words and phrases, like developmental delay and no imaginative play and isolated and early intervention.  We started therapy and preschool and while he struggled to find his voice, I did too.  I couldn't figure out how to tell people what I was coming to terms with, the reality of having a son with a "disability".  I found myself dropping out of the mom-petition, avoiding playdates and birthday parties and listening with jealousy as the other moms compared their children's milestones.  I wondered if my child would ever use a toilet, make a friend, learn to read or write his name, much less play on a basketball team, speak Spanish, or write a play for his third grade class to perform.

I was scared for my son to receive an official diagnosis.  I was afraid of that word, afraid of what being associated with that word might mean for him.  Would he become a target of bullies?  What other words would they call him, when they saw him riding the "short bus" that is no longer short?  How many times had I made jokes at others' expense, how many times had I declared something "retarded" in my adolescent speaking-before-thinking phase?

But I came to realize its not a word spoken by a doctor in a white coat that I am afraid of.  Its what we are teaching all of our kids about words and about how we treat people who are different from us.  And that's when I found my voice.  I began sharing my opinions and stories and family with the internet, simultaneously afraid that no one would read and afraid that everyone would.  I found, through blogging, that I could form my words, gather my thoughts, and take the time to present an idea without being offensive, hurtful, thoughtless.  Although it can often be a place where people comment without any regard for the fact that a person is on the other end, reading their words, for me, the internet is the place where I finally learned to think before speaking.  I can look at a person's profile picture, I read about their struggles and hopes, and I take my time forming a response.  My hope is that what comes out is different, so that people perceive me differently.  So that they use words like "loving" and "encouraging" to describe me.

Another benefit of speaking boldly for my son and others like him, is that he is now finding his voice.  He is speaking and learning to read; he is expressing his needs and communicating to others.  One of his favorite stories is The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.  I love to hear him loudly proclaim, "I am the Lorax...I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues."  Where I once saw myself as speaking for my silent son, now I wonder what voiceless, invisible group he will speak for.