The Mourning Process
you heard me right. the mourning process. you know that series of awful horrible feelings you get as a reaction, most of the time, to losing a loved one? yeah, that one. when you receive a diagnosis of something like Autism there is a very real mourning process that happens. and over the past couple of months i have easily been able to hide mine from friends and family. until now. i can talk a little bit about it. it truly feels like someone very close to me died. someone i had known all my life. it feels like they died. like they are gone and i am left here to pick up the pieces. but no one died. everyone is still here. however, i can explain it now. the reason why we go through a mourning process after getting a lifelong diagnosis like autism is because there was a death. THE EXPECTATIONS YOU HAD FOR YOUR CHILD'S FUTURE ESSENTIALLY DIED WITH THE DIAGNOSIS. the child that you held in your mind as a teenager, as an adult, an older toddler. all of the things you saw them doing in your mind as they grew up. died. that is why we mourn. its not that we know any less about our child's future than we did before the diagnosis. we actually know more. when i got monkey's diagnosis i was devastated. but i had to immediately pick up and move forward. for him. for his dad. for the grandparents. but my mother in law called me this morning after seeing a woman on television go through getting a diagnosis for her son and she told me about what she had just watched and asked me "is that how ya'll felt? is that what ya'll went through?" what could i say? i said yes. and the tears just flooded from my eyes because no one has asked about how we handled it. and how we as parents were feeling or doing. not since we got the diagnosis. we are parents. we are supposed to stay strong and keep moving forward for the betterment of the child. but when there isn't any time given for an actual mourning period those feelings are waiting to jump out at any moment. at any mention of the word 'autsm'. i still can barely say that word out loud. we need to remember that even though our expectations died our happiness and out son's happiness doesn't have to.
