As Lizze and I move forward in our quest for healing and putting our family back together, there are a few things that we have learned from our previous journey. 

Parents in general but especially Autism parents, can lose a sense of self because we pour everything we have into our kids. We give and give until we bankrupt ourselves. We do this with the very best of intentions but we will seldom obtain the desired outcome, especially in the long run.

Ignoring your own personal needs in favor of meeting those of your kids, seems like a good idea at the time but what happens is that both our emotional and physical health can suffer as a result. 

This can lead to relationship or marriage problems, even when there aren’t any other underlying issues. 

While it may seem selfish to focus on oneself, this is the kind of selfishness that you must learn to accept because the alternative is not a good thing.

It’s very similar to what I was always taught as a paramedic.  As the medic is charge, it was my job to first and foremost ensure the safety of myself and my partner.  It may seem weird to hear that but if something happened to one of us, we wouldn’t be able to take care of anyone else. By ensuring personal safety first, we were in a better position to help our patients.  

The same logic applies to being a parent.  

If we don’t take care of ourselves first and our marriage second, we can’t be as strong as we need to be in order to survive the very difficult life we have been blessed with.  We can’t be what our kids need us to be. 

This is something Lizze and I had to learn the hard way. When that proverbial wall was hit, we both were thrust in different directions.  We both needed help to find our way. While the lessons we had to learn may have been different and our roles along the way we’re different as well, we eventually found our way back and that’s a pretty amazing thing.  

My hope is that by sharing our story, we can shine a light on a very common problem facing special needs parents today.  

The lessons we learned we hard but vital for us to be able to come back together.  

This time around, we are smarter, stronger and better equipped to handle the stress and insanity that is sometimes our life.  

I want to thank everyone for all their love and support.  I also want to thank you for being so positive about this because we see this as a very positive thing as well.  Much the same as life,  this will be a work in progress but we are both ready to take on these challenges together.  
We have a much bigger and more in depth support system but it’s still going to be a lot of hard work.  

I hope you will join us on this new journey because I think there’s a lot to be learned from our experience.  💙☺