Melody Latimer asparenting.com At some point, everyone will have to deal with loss and grief. Whether it’s the loss of a pet, relative, or friend, it can affect us in ways we never expected. I recently suffered a loss that was unexpected and quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure in my life. We hear sayings like, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?” and “There’s a purpose in everything.” In the moment, these things can sound like, “You’re making a bigger deal out of this than is necessary.” I’ve been lucky to not hear any of those dismissive statements. But there are some lessons I have learned: Take your time. There’s no set amount of time that you are supposed to handle getting over the loss of someone or something you care about. Sometimes, you never get over the loss, and it’s just a matter of…
Tag: friendships
J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.” That’s a mouthful to say, let alone hear. It was explained as a type of autism. That was 16 years ago. I did not have the Internet at home. There was no Google for further research. Dustin Hoffman had provided my only experience of autism in the movie, Rainman. Looking back, the declaration–the actual diagnosing words from a stranger, a neurologist, is fuzzy. What did those letters, PDD-NOS, mean? Could a socially constructed diagnosis tell me who my son would become? When I got home from that appointment, teary-eyed and uncertain, I looked at my son with his large brown eyes, head of blondish-brown ringlets, and cherub face. We had already begun to find our rhythm together. In our first year together, I intuitively discovered that if I laid him on the floor, and placed my head…
Beautiful Toronto is a lovely setting for the explosion of information at IMFAR 2012. One way we are trying to bring the conference to those of you who could not attend is by using Twitter to “live tweet” sessions and events. Later, using Storify, we can piece back together those 140-character bites of information. The following is the Tweet story of an oral presentation entitled Friendship in ASD through the Life Span: Nature, Trajectories, Importance and Treatment. Any errors (including hastily-typed misspellings!) or omissions are mine. Please follow @thinkingautism, @jennyalice, @shannonrosa, @ejwillingham, and @aspieadvocate for more IMFAR 2012 conversation.The conference is using #IMFAR2012 to make finding and sharing information easier.-JBM