The Real Story of the last 10 years: Part III: Dear Friends and Loving Gestures

Here is another of many valid perspectives on “the rest of the story” or “our family’s last 10 years with Lauren.”

We were surrounded by dear friends and loving gestures.   That’s also a great description of what our life with autism looked like over the past ten years. 

There’s no way I could remember the many blessings in the order they occurred.  I don’t have files with dated invoices and names on top for each occurrence like I do to help me recount the medical history.  (Wow, that makes me reflect on what I obsessively save in a highly organized fashion!)  But even without such memory aids, these events are what I can retrieve easily in my brain, whereas, for the life of me, I can’t remember the name or office location of the last neurologist Lauren saw.

So here’s more of the REAL rest of the story with a perspective of gratitude, with a promise that the first mentioned isn’t necessarily “first,” and the last mentioned isn’t necessarily “last.”  Every memory and person included should be considered FIRST in that it/he/she are important to who Craig, Bryn, Lauren and I are today, and was worthy of mention in this blog post. 

The Real Story of the last 10 years: Part II: We Homeschooled

 We homeschooled. That’s actually what happened over the past ten years. We homeschooled.

Here is another of many valid perspectives on “the rest of the story” or “our family’s last 10 years with Lauren.”

We homeschooled.   And we celebrated life.   That’s also what we’ve been doing for the past ten years. 

The Real Story of the last 10 years: Part I: I Prayed for a Dog

I prayed for a dog. That’s actually what happened over the past ten years. I prayed for a dog.

My last blog post told about our family’s last ten years, with Lauren’s health and healing at the center. It was a story that needed to be told, but it was a very limited perspective of the experiences of Lauren and our family over the past ten years.

Today I looked at our old dog, Trooper, and realized that he provided another quite valid perspective to the story. Because I began praying for that dog about the same time my prayers for Lauren became quite frantic. And then I thought about the many good and sweet things that have happened over the past ten years and what a shame that “Lauren’s story” couldn’t include those aspects. But it can. And it shall. Yes, it needs to be a whole new blog post, or maybe multiple posts, so our readers don’t unplug and throw their computers in fear of a long-term commitment each time a new post comes in from our site. So here’s another of many valid perspectives on “the rest of the story” of our family’s last 10 years with Lauren.

I prayed for a dog. And we hiked. The two actually go together.

Catching up: 10 Years since Dancing in Cornmeal

Warning: This is the long promised, as well as just SUPER LONG, blog post that serves as “the rest of the story” to Dancing in Cornmeal: Life with Autism. I began writing this post the week of Lauren’s 20th birthday, and intended the title to be 10 Years of Catching Up—on Lauren’s 20th Birthday! But long stories take time to tell. So instead, here we are 10 years after the release of the book (approximately—it was spring). The story stopped when Lauren was 10 years old, so . . . same thing really.

One of the purposes of creating this blog was to share our success and to network concerning diet, specifically SCD and Paleo, so heads up that there is quite a bit of medical history and diet talk in this post. I tried to keep it as streamlined as possible, but . . . Lauren’s story is what it is, and streamlined is not a descriptor I’ve ever used for it!

Part I: Intro

In the 10 years since writing Dancing in Cornmeal: Life with Autism, our family has been through a lot with Lauren. Dancing in Cornmeal helped to define “a lot,” as will this blog post.

Weird Things We Did This Week

I have a dear long distance friend who has a blog on which she posts “Best Things of the Week” just about every week, usually with wonderfully descriptive photos of each “best thing.” I enjoy keeping up with her life this way. And now she’s inspired me. I’ve decided that, as they occur, I am going to post “Weird Things We Did This Week.” (I foresee posting under this heading weekly, but maybe we’re not as overwhelmed with weirdness as I perceive. We’ll see.) Of course, all weirdness listed will be things we did to accommodate autism. We keep hoping people realize we’re forced to do “weird things” because of the autism. I think long-term friends often forget we have an “unusual circumstance” and have grown fond of us “just being weird,” rather than “having to be a little weird because of the autism.” Now, I’m not saying I’m not a fan of weird. Intellectually, I am highly appreciative of any person, thing, natural phenomenon, whatever, that steps outside of a predictable box. But . . . hanging out in a nice, quiet, unnoticeable, easy-to-maintain box would be nice for a change, too.

So, for the first installment “Weird Things We Did This Week.”

Photos of Lauren at 20

So that our readers have a visual of whom they’re reading about (and maybe for whom they’re praying?. . . I can only hope), I looked through all the snapshots I took of Lauren over the past year. I’d hoped to post a good one that would represent her at 20 years old (or close enough). Well, I have not a single flattering picture of an anxiety-free Lauren making eye contact!

But today it was almost 70 degrees! (Gotta love mid-winter in Georgia.) So Craig, Lauren and I took a walk in our neighborhood. I brought the camera with plans to snap away the whole walk, knowing success is statistically proportionate to number of attempts. And that Lauren has been in a fabulous mood all day. (Okay, this may be an even better indicator of success in Lauren’s case!) So here we are. I didn’t get just one keeper, I got quite a few. Here are the many (happy) faces of Lauren at 20.

Peace on Earth: Lauren at 20

Craig and I dread the holidays for many more reasons than the average Scrooge. Transition is tough on OCD, prone-to-defcon-levels-of-anxiety Lauren. Figuring out how to introduce new music, activities and decorations to our lives without disturbing Lauren’s peace has required some Major General level strategic planning. Thankfully, after many years of exposure to the bling that is the Christmas season, Lauren (generally a fan of bling) is now a fan of most things Christmas. For about 6 or 8 years now, Lauren’s been happy to allow the Christmas tree and stockings to remain once we put them up. About 3 years ago, she began to appreciate that wrapped gifts are omens of good things to come—even worth the stress of idiot grown-ups telling her “Break the rule! Rip the paper!!!” (Yes, we are always sorry come January when we are trying to tape back together entire favorite books of torn out pages, while stupidly reminding her, “If you rip it, it’s broken and you can’t read it anymore.”)