Things We Aren’t Supposed to Talk About

Cadre. Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon. It is 02:00 here in beautiful St. Paul, Minnesota. We are celebrating because today it's in the twenties and it's been really cold, so that's a huge win for us here. All right. I'm in my car running around, as is the deal, on a Monday afternoon. And so today I am here to talk about things we're not supposed to talk about. Today's topic is pretty specific to my life, although I'm sure there will be many of you out there who have the same experience or a similar one.

And so today I am raising my hand in what I call this AA for humans session, which is essentially raising my hand and saying, hi, I'm Shannon. I am reframing the story that I tell myself about my son's autism. This is top of mind for me today is hi, speak wonder. It's so good to see you. Happy Monday. Why this is top of mind for me today. So this Thursday, I have an evaluation with my son. He has autism, and he is doing, he's 14 years old, he was diagnosed at two, and he's doing his evaluation, which happens every few years.

And so they think there might be some new things happening with him potentially, and a whole bunch of other things. But I'm going to talk about his diagnosis. It can be true and specific to an autism diagnosis specifically, but I think also for life, it's a metaphor. Right. So good morning, or good afternoon, Beth. It's good to see you. Hello. Okay, so when you have a child, you have dreams for that child, right? And you have hopes and you have sort of like, this story in your head of what life is going to be like for you and for that child.

And so when you get an autism diagnosis, when you get any diagnosis, it is a interruption in the story. It's a moment where the thing that you have in your head of what might happen or what should happen or what could happen is shifted with all this new knowledge of stuff that you weren't expecting. And there's a story, it's not a specific to story, but it's some story about, like, I think I thought I was going to Italy and I ended up in Holland, right? So I had this trip planned and I'm like, I'm doing this and I'm going to do, eat all the spaghetti and I'm going to do all the things, and now all of a sudden I'm looking at tulips.

So that's a surprise. And that happened for me when my son was two. And now he's 14. And the metaphor here is that as we go through. Through life. I'm sorry, I'm sweating in my car. Is that as we go through life, we're gonna have things that we don't expect. We're gonna have these moments that feel like they should be named sad or they should be named bad or they should be named different, right? So when you're. When your ticket comes and your destination was Holland and not Italy, it should be maybe a disappointment.

And that's certainly how it felt in the beginning of that journey for me was the thing happened that I wasn't expecting, and it was labeled with sadness and grief and all the things. So why I'm talking about this today is because I last night, watched this show called Love on the spectrum, and it's about men and women with autism, adults who fall in love. And I'll tell you this. If you guys watch any tv, if you watch any shows, if you watch anything, think about the last time you watched a show on tv and you just, like, smiled with joy, right?

So think about the last time that you sat there and you felt yourself grinning like an idiot because it's so meaningful. So that's what happened to me last night as I watched this show. It was the first time I'd ever seen it, and I immediately saw my son. Immediately. And it just breaks down what love is like for these. These people, these neurodiverse people, these people with autism and how they have to reimagine their entire world. Like they don't know what they don't know. So they're preparing for dates.

They're preparing for sitting at a table with someone and looking back and forth and having these exchanges that, to you and I, are just inherent in who we are, right? So, like, when we go out to eat, we know that, you know, you're gonna have a conversation and these beautiful people, that's not inherent in who they are, right? Kind of what autism is. It's a social emotional disorder. And I watched it, and I was like, this is freaking beautiful, Beth, you watch it, too. Speak wonder. You've watched it.

So as you watch it, I sat there last night and I couldn't turn it off. And I was, like, smiling, and I was so happy. And I thought, my God, when is the last time I have been this happy and inspired? And I say all that to say because this Thursday, I think I opened with this. My son is getting rediagnosed, right. For a three hour evaluation. And to be honest, I have been scared about his future. I am scared about his future. I don't know what that's gonna look like for him. But as I watched the show last night and I literally felt myself like the biggest nerd, just like, you know, if my kids would have come down, they would have made fun of me because I was just smiling to myself at the beauty in these people who see the world in this amazing way that I don't see and we don't see and that I had named initially as disappointing or something.

I had to grieve or whatever, which all is normal. It just made me stop and say, like, oh, my God, I don't have to frame it that way, right? There's all this beauty. There's all these things that happen because of autism that are touching me as I sit on this couch and watch this and I'm smiling like a nerd. So I raised my hand just to say I'm reframing it because, well, I can't always do that. There are days when it's hard, and I'm not going to be able to reframe it. And just like anything in your life, there might be things at times that are hard and you're going to cry and you're going to be sad and you're going to feel alone.

9% of the time, the other side of that that is beautiful and good and real and makes you sit on a couch and grin like an idiot. So my hand is raised saying, I'm gonna reframe some things, and I. And to reframe, I do have to acknowledge first and foremost that I did initially frame it as negative or initially framed it as something to be grieved for and something to be sad about. And so I think that's the part that I want to take away the shame from, is to say, like, that's okay to do that because that might feel right.

And there's this beautiful stuff that comes with anything if we're able to reframe it and take a look at it. So you guys watch that show. If you. If you haven't beth tons of Purple Hearts, it seems like you love it as much as I do. If you want to be a total nerd and sit on the couch and have your kids make fun of you because you're smiling at this show and these people, you don't know, which is mostly what they say to me. It's like, God, mom, you're smiling at these people. You don't know. It's fine.

I'll take it all day long. So that's my word for today, guys. I hope you can find the beauty and the things that are hard. I hope that you can see that there might be potential for something else to be true in addition to the sadness and grief that you might have in a situation. So thank you for being here today. I will see you on Thursday. I think it's Thursday. I'll see you on Wednesday.