Look what I have!

Look what I have!

And you can have one too!

Gravity is available now for pre-order now here and here. In less than two weeks, it will be out on the stands, as they say.

Stay tuned for news, excerpts, guest-posting, interviews and more as the Gravity website will launch on Monday…

In the meantime, here’s a review that will appear in the March issue of ForeWord Magazine that singles out three contributors, B. E. Pinkham, Lesley Quinn, and James C. Wilson:

Most people have some connection to autism, even if it’s only a memory from their own childhood of a boy or girl who spent a lot of time on the perimeter of the playground. Too many people have a closer connection—a friend, a child. According to the Autism Society of America, autism spectrum disorders are the fastest growing developmental disability; soon no family will remain untouched.

While the numbers may be bleak, the personal stories and poems in Gravity Pulls You In: Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum are wonderfully hopeful and authentic. You’ll find no false sincerity in these accounts; the writers lay bare their mistakes, their triumphs, their despair and their hope. Their courage is evident on the page.

For instance, B.E. Pinkham shares the difficulty she faced in deciding to send her fourteen-year-old autistic son to a group residence. One day at the beach he tries to keep his younger sister under the water to play and she has to swim away, hard, to keep from being hurt. When Pinkham talks to her daughter afterwards, she admits her feelings of guilt: “This is what happens when her parents foolishly pretend to have a normal family.”

As sad as these stories can be, they’re also laugh-out-loud funny. As James Wilson writes in his essay about taking his son on an outing to a Hooters restaurant, “I’ve found that when all else fails and heads start banging, only dark humor can help me cope.” This collection is full of laughter, the kind that arises out of desperation, resignation, sadness, and joy.

Not only do these parents love their children amazingly well, they write amazingly well. Lesley Quinn, for example, using second person point of view in her essay, exquisitely shapes the pattern her thoughts follow when asked by well-meaning colleagues about her daughter. “…she loves listening to movie soundtracks over and over again, and she loves dogs, and she is, in her heroic little body, a huge presence in your hurting and grateful heart, and for 100 percent of her eighteen years, she has been your biggest and most complicated blessing.”

Readers both clenched in the grip of autism and those lucky enough to have missed its grasp so far will cherish this collection of writers who are brave enough to share their worst moments along with their best ones.

—Andi Diehn

Invitation to step into a larger version of oneself

One of the many gifts of The Nurtured Heart Approach (NHA) is that helped me redirect my focus to how Fluffy was demonstrating his greatness in the present moment.  How was he being successful right now. How he was embodying qualities that I value right now.

I can’t say I do it perfectly but it’s such a welcome relief when I do remember like the moment at the check-out counter when you frantically reach beneath the tissues and the gum and the hair elastics in the belly of your purse and finally find your wallet. Oh! I have what I need right here.

This past week, the goddesses over at Mondo Beyondo invited us to create a clearing, a space where something new can enter. This could be interpreted any number of ways from the very literal–clearing out a closet, dispensing with an old unloved piece of furniture, logging off-line for a week, to the more abstract–forgiving someone, postponing a decision. They also asked us to find an area where we could place the following items: a picture of someone that inspires, a candle, something from nature, and a note of permission from yourself to step more closely to your dreams.

I had created an alter at the beginning of this new year. I needed a place set aside for beingness–if you’ll pardon my yoga speak–a place where I could invite myself to sit still, visualize, and steep in all that I love and appreciate about my life right now. A place where I could intentionally practice the NHA on myself. I noticed it had nearly everything that was suggested: heart-shaped rocks and a sprig of wild sage from nature, a picture of me when I was little and lacking in self-consciousness, candles, even something they didn’t mention–a tibetan singing bowl that makes the most rich and resonant sounds. But no note of permission from myself. So I made one.

It reads: Now is the Time to be Risky.

It could read, Now is the Time to be Afraid, something a therapist said to me a few months ago. She was talking about appropriate fear, the fear that signals stepping out of one’s comfort zone, into unchartered territory, maybe even into forbidden territory given the unspoken messages communicated by well-meaning but unconscious caregivers. I chose Risky because it conjures up leaps into the air and daring feats of courage and that, in and of itself, makes me feel more brave.

Acting was one of my young girl dreams. I graduated from an acting conservatory when I was 20 and soon after, moved to Manhattan to storm the stage but fear won out. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of standing out, fear of not standing out, fear of being mediocre, fear of not knowing what the fuck I was doing, fear of fear of fear of fear of.

I didn’t know it at the time. Fear is a shape shifter, often presenting as a simple matter of schedule, I’d love to do such and such but I’m just too busy. Or level-headedness, the voice of reason, maturation. Or distraction, doubt, procrastination. But I’m on to fear now.

A couple of months ago, I signed up for a workshop in how to write and perform your own solo show. It’s in New York City. I pay a sitter a chunk to stay with Fluffy. I gas up the car, drive to the train, buy my tickets, stay overnight, return the next day. It all costs a gazillion dollars and takes over four hours of travel each way.

As I made my way to the first class I worried I’d stand out. I worried I’d be the oldest one coming from the farthest away. I worried it would make me look desperate. I’m happy to say that not only am I not the oldest one nor coming from farthest away but that I don’t give a shit about any of that. I only care that I’ve been doing it, risking it, getting up in front of the class, even though my inner critic streams from my ears like a smoking genie from a lamp and tries to silence me.

Tomorrow is my last class. I have been having a ball. Even though I haven’t been brilliant every minute. Far from it. Even though I’ve been nervous and a bit self-conscious. Even though I’ve wanted at times to bolt from the room. I say to myself, Kyra, look at what you’re doing right now, right this minute. You’re here. You’re risking. It doesn’t matter how it turns out. The power is in the present moment.

The power is in taking the risk itself.

There are times in the class when I feel good, calm, excited, inspired. And there are time when I feel the resistance taking hold, the tingling in my chest, the shortness of breath, the stiffening in muscles of my face. I hope I remember that the next time I ask Fluffy to stretch. It’s easy to forget what might be surging through his body when what I ask of him doesn’t trouble my body at all. It’s easy to forget what it feels like to step into a larger version of yourself.

I may not have a clearer idea of what sort of solo show I’d like to write one day or even if I want to continue with that dream but I do have a much clearer picture of what courage feels like. It’s not confident and bold, steady and sure. It’s Shaky. Raw. Exposed. Tender. Shy.

I don’t take it lightly.

For anyone.

Changing the Conversation from Cure to Connection

Fluffy in a snowy field; yesterday.

It’s still quite a challenge to get my boy out into the world–literally–to entice him out the front door, back door, side door and into a field, the car, a store, the park, a playground. He crushes civilizations with the roar of a mighty warrior in front of his computer screen yet outside he cowers in front of a small tangle of branches and whines. Mom!  It’s too tangled!  This walk is taking too long!  It’s too cold! Too sunny! Too icy! Let’s cut it short and go back home!

I saw Ben X the other night, courtesy of our Roku and Netflix. It streamed through the air, over the tops of cars, under the wings of some very remedial migrating geese, through our walls, into our TV and then across the room to my eyes. I thought it was the best depiction I’ve seen so far of a kid (in this case, a teenager) with Aspergers.

I’m not saying Fluffy is like Ben X. He’s not in many ways. But the acting, writing, filming, the story, were all so very well done, individual, believable, and frankly for me, terrifying. The end veers off into a bit of fantasy. Thank god is all I have to say. If it continued into more and never-ending bleakness I would have hated it. I can’t be left that way at the end of a movie (or a book. I thought The Road was beautiful and I read it with white knuckles, needing an ending I could live with, longing for some glimmer of hope, afraid it wouldn’t be there but also afraid if it was there, it would betray the truth of everything that came before it).

I know real life can, for some, be pain and more pain and then it ends, ie, no redemption, no hope, no possibilities. I can’t watch that. Not because I need to live in a la la word where faeries sprinkle forgiveness dust and the mean guys always get their due but because I am human and humans are meaning making machines.

We need stories with meaning. Nothing means anything doesn’t work for me because I don’t believe it but more important, it gives me no entry point, no way to connect.

Everything means something to someone.

Asperger’s means something to me. I’m sure it means something else to Fluffy. I imagine it means something else to you reading this, depending on who you are and what you’ve seen, heard, read, experienced.

What about awareness? What stories are important to tell when we talk about awareness? Ben is the victim of terrible bullying in Ben X. Most of the kids are aware that he’s different but that doesn’t stop them. They don’t like his differences.

For me, awareness isn’t the whole thing. There needs to be something that comes after awareness. I think it’s connection.

A while ago there was a blog discussion going on about brokenness. I’ve been thinking about that, about brokeness and journeys to wholeness, journeys toward healing. I’ve been re-reading Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendricks and I think it’s genius. I really do. Everything he says about what we can heal in ourselves through our committed relationships can be applied to our relationships with our children. Our children reflect back to us the places where we are broken, the places where we need to heal.

So, my Fluffy is fearless in the fantasy world of Civilization IV but timid and overwhelmed in the great outdoors. I can get irritated by his complaints, his pleas to go home, to carry his coat, fill his water bottle, turn down the sun, heat up the air, etc., etc.,  or I can see where I am timid and overwhelmed myself, to find our point of connection.

Dreaming

Fluffy and R; 2008

First this: Fluffy and R (pictured above) met almost two and a half years ago at a family dance. They had the most amazing and spontaneous play time after running into each other by chance at a local school playground a month or so later. Fluffy came home that day saying, “I’ve been waiting for a friend like R my whole life.”

Hooray! It’s happened! Fluffy has a friend here in this new town! Dave and I said while dancing around the living room. I set up another playdate and then another and finally one last one pictured above in a local park and they were disasters, all.

We fell out of touch with R and his family after that. But now! We’ve reconnected and may I say? R came over a few days ago for a playdate here in our new place in this new year and it was a five star success!

!!!

Now this: I’m dreaming. Of Fluffy and more playdates. Of the new school opening in less than a month. Of the book coming out around the very same time. And more.

I have two new journals by my side:

- one for a solo show (I’m taking a class in NYC–that’s right! A class, three hours away!)

- one for Mondo Beyondo

I want to share something Mondo, a list of my core values and my top energizers. I have it posted by my computer. It helps to focus me on what matters. Will you make your own list? and post it here? or post a link to your blog?

My Core Values

Optimism (loving and focused persistance)

Pulsing vitality, Resourcefulness, Gratitude

Courage! Stretching out of one’s comfort zone!

Empathy, Intuition, Compassion

Funny, playful spirit

Open, friendly, inclusive

Making something from nothing!

Top Energizers

Laughing really hard

Stretching

Yoga

Dancing to enlivening music

Singing at the top of my lungs

Going outside

Creating something: food, a drawing, a song on the piano, art, a pretty area, a space in the house that works!

Writing

Reading

Taking a hot bath or long steamy shower

And one thing from an interview with Sark–her Inspiration Hot Line: 415-546-3742.

Call.

Go ahead.

What can it hurt?

something small

It’s scary to write. Don’t know why, but I avoid it like the fucking plague.

I’m standing right outside resistance’s door. I’m going in; I’ve got about 2 hours.

Wish me words–any words will do. I’ll fix them up later.

Wish me focus.

Wish me brave.

Singing

Please excuse my fickle behavior. I’m here.

I’m gone.

I know.

I’m working on balance and consistency. In all areas: parenting, self-care, healthful eating, household maintenance, writing, sex (oy vey with the sex), and on and on and on. It’s like a giant sea-saw with boxes and stacks and items precarious sliding up and down either side of the fulcrum.

First to dispense with holiday news: There were some bumps but all in all, it was a lovely, lovely Christmas. I’m still trying to figure out how to weave the NHA and PACE philosophies into a workable household strategy for dealing with all manner of regulatory expressions, ie, the calm and focused with the wild, scattered, and frankly, flat-out ADHD episodes as well as the code orange events due to sensory overload and social-emotional delays. It’s a work in progress but a much more workable work in progress than it was last year. By about ten million gazillion percentage points.

Second: We’re slated to have a New Year’s Day party here. Here! At our house! With people streaming in and out, dragging children and food! I have no idea what it will be like, if three people will sit around awkwardly stabbing the air with conversation starters or if the house will be filled with raucous merriment or chaotic cacophony; if Fluffy will still be glad we’re doing this or up in his room jumping on his bed shouting GET OUTTA MY HOUSE like Julian Lennon did during his father and Yoko’s Bed-in. We’ll see…

Third: I’m fine with 2010, truly I am. I just need to locate the last decade. It was here a second ago. Let’s see…I was 40 and pregnant and, and, and, and, and? Now I’m 50 and my son is about to turn 9.

?

I’m so entirely glad to be alive. Let’s make that clear. Love the life! Love it! My 50s could be my best decade yet! But I have to admit, I saw my brother and his wife over the holidays and they’re both over a decade younger than me and very fit and trim and, well, young. Did I say they’re young? I’m not talking 20s young which is an entirely different animal. But late 30s going into 40s–it’s confusing and slightly panic-inducing, like I was sitting cross-legged in a circle while something is passed around and when it comes to me I barely touch it before it’s passed to the next guy. Hey! I want to shout, grabbing it back, I was holding that! My 40s flew by offering the absolute best moments of my life even as some days crawled through echoing landscapes of isolation and worry, me in the house day after day after year after year with my sweet, sensitive, brilliant, controlling, sleepless, anxious, overwhelmed, and needy son, playing games I didn’t understand in a sea of magnatiles and a wind of words.

You see, the bulk of my energy in my 40s was spent keeping the aperture of my son’s future open.

Fourth: I’m fine. Really I am. Fluffy has a cold but is happily playing his new computer game. It’s 1 degree outside and we are all inside a warm, sturdy house. My husband brings home the bacon. We have an easy life. We’re all lucky and mostly happy and healthy. Beegu and I had a strenuous and satisfying walk in the meadows and everything worked, I mean, my legs and arms, and heart and brain, the pumping of blood, oxygen and carbon dioxide shuttles speeding to and fro, sensory integration and memory recall snapping away at lightening speed, synaptic gaps vaulted, etc., etc.,

Fifth: I’m baking bread. I’m following the recipe in My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method. And in doing so, I discovered why my previous attempts at this method produced an under-done interior. I cut it open about 15 minutes after I plucked it out of the oven.

It needs an hour.

You see, a critical piece of the cooking goes on after you take it out of the oven. The dry crust and the wet dough exchange heat and energy. As the interior continues to bake, steam escapes through the cracks in the exterior making cracking and popping sounds bread bakers call singing.

Singing.

I wasn’t letting my bread sing! I hate that! My poor bread! Deprived of its voice!

Perhaps this is all I need to think of as I step over that twisted threshold, into the new year, the new decade, my new decade of life, for me, for my darling son, for those I know and love who are still waiting for their inside to finish baking:

Some of us just need a shit load of time before we sing.

I’m a Hopeful Parent Today

Come on over to Hopeful Parents today. And bring your belief with you!

Holiday Cheer to All!

We’re packing up for our holiday trip to Rhode Island to be with family. There are quite a few changes since last Christmas, the big one: The Nurtured Heart, which gives us a way to deal with difficult behavior that will, hopefully, veer us back on track rather than veer us farther and farther off course until you drink too much wine, curse your siblings, scream at your mother, throw your stuff in the car and zoom home days earlier than planned.

Theoretically, that is!! La la!! Not that I did anything like that last year!

Ahem.

So, we load the car with gifts, Beegu, T-girl, the three of us and our Nurtured Heart Approach and head off to stay near family in a hotel room with pool and workout room. 

Before we go,  I give you a game by Fluffy McFluffster for you to play with your kids, your neighbors, your spouse, your paster, your therapist, your mailman, your mason, etc.,. It’s a game Fluffy made up, taking bits and pieces of something he and his sitter, E the Magnificent, have played from time to time. 

It’s a version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, but instead of those gestures, you use the ones below. The point is to win. By killing your opponent. This appeals to Fluffy. Winning. By Killing. Pretend play, of course! We pad around the house talking about love and peace and embracing our fellow man/woman but when it comes right down to it, Fluffy is a boy who loves guns, weapons, games, winning and battles most of all. 

We play it when we’re waiting for things. It’s great fun.

Enjoy.

Sending much Holiday Cheer.

And Love.

And Joy.

And Peace.

Energize the greatness that exists at this very moment in those around you.

Including the greatness in you.

Looky Here!

Looky here–hot off the press!!

Actually, it will be hot off the press in February, 2010. But look (again, I link…I’m shameless)!! You can pre-order and save $3.99!!

I have much more to say on the subject as we draw closer to the publication date but for now, I must carry on with our holiday preparations AND celebrations as Hanukkah is in progress and the candles are burning and the gifts are accumulating.

Check-in

 

family portrait; taken with dave's iphone; november, 2009.

 

I know everyone says kids, especially those on the spectrum, need structure. And I don’t necessarily disagree. Our day does have a shape to it–a sort of post-modern shape a fair amount of the time but yes, a shape none the less. 

We begin the day in bed. Fluffy goes to sleep on his own about half the time. The other half, he needs to cuddle with one of us while a cd fills the room with scientifically proven sleep-enhancing sounds and the magical Star Gazer fills the room with a dazzling (and soporific) laser night sky. During the night we step through one, sometimes two, rounds of musical beds and by morning, Fluffy and I are usually in one bed, sawing zzzzzzz’s like cartoon characters at 8 am while Dave (the industrious one) has been up in his home office for hours. 

At our first wakeful sounds, Dave comes running, wearing his early morning uniform: baggy whitish-gray boxers and a periwinkle blue bathrobe. He crawls under the covers and we all begin to call for Beegu:

“BEEGU!  GOOZIE GIRL!!  GOO GOO HEAD!!!! COME HERE GIRLIEGIRLIEGIRLIEGIRLIE!!!”

at the top of our lungs. Her collar tinkles from the tv room as she stumbles to her feet, trots down the hall and leaps up to garner much-coveted scratching and ear tugging, etc. etc.,

After morning playtime with Dave, a bite to eat, and some rigorous barrel-climbing and rope-swinging in his playroom, Fluffy and I have about an hour of ‘lesson time.’ It’s the only formal instruction we do:  math, writing, piano, and a daily puzzle. 

Math: we’re about halfway through the Life of Fred Fractions (ordered from Polka Dot Publishing) book I found through the great site, Living Math. I highly recommend this series. The math is embedded in a silly story about a 5 1/2 year old professor of math at Kittens University. The lessons are super short which means no prep time for me, the teacher, and no angst-ridden math drills for Fluffy, the student.

Writing: Fluffy has two more upper case cursive letters to learn and then he’ll have the entire alphabet in cursive under his belt, upper and lower case! I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: we abandoned printing and took up cursive a year ago; the mechanics of cursive proved to be much, much easier to master.

Piano: We still use Simply Music which I adore. Fluffy’s been playing for about a year and a half and though coaxing him over to the ivories for practice time can be tricky, once he gets going, he’s happy to be there.  

Fluffy loves riddles and puzzles. I’ve introduced daily challenges from these two books:  Are They Thinking?, and Super Smart.  We’ve read through the Stories to Solve series a couple of times–Stories to Solve, More Stories to Solve, and Still More Stories to Solve (Dave and Fluffy also like Two-minute Mysteries) which we heartily recommend. We’re now reading The Cow of No Color, Riddle Stories and Justice Tales from around the World. Some of the stories don’t have a right answer so it’s been an interesting way to open up discussions about points of views, ie, different ways of looking at one event. 

Evan the magnificent sitter comes three times a week for extended playtime. Lately, they’ve been playing a game that combines Risk and Go. Do you know about Go?  

The rest of the time, Fluffy plays with 4, 4, T (his adorable new Chinese Dwarf hamster) or reads, enjoys his thrice a week computer time, dives into the deep end of the pool to retrieve rings at the Y. We bake, take walk, visit museums, swing by a playground or park. Once a week, Fluffy has a Dungeons and Dragons class at a nearby homeschool program and I’d say he ends up having a spontaneous playdate with the kids across the street at least once or twice a month. That’s huge. 

Weekends begin with Friday night movie night which we’ve occasionally screened with our neighbors. Saturday is a four-hour, (yes, I said four-hour!) role-playing game called Dark Ages. It’s the one class where Fluffy gets dropped off, an exotic and advanced event I used to hear other parents did without batting an eye. It’s the only time during the week that Fluffy takes an interest in what he’s wearing. He must wear his black  t-shirt, black pants, and his long black star wars cape from last year’s Halloween costume–black confers immunity from enemy fire as he dashes in and out of caves, castles, and forests (okay, and the computer stations set up through-out the room) wielding his sword and shield with about 8 other kids. 

I recently pulled the plug on Fluffy’s Sunday computer time in order to establish a true Family Adventure Day, something that started while we were at PACE. It a day when we, the parents, intentionally work on being in charge, guiding the day without a set schedule or discussions ahead of time, to preview, practice, etc., I was surprisingly nervous to put this in motion, especially the ‘no computer time’ part. Internally, I cowered. I knew Fluffy would HATE the idea, would shake his fist at the heavens, ruing the injustice of this change. I was scared of the fallout, as if Fluffy was my boss or my dad and I was terrified to tell him I wrecked the family car. By the time I did it, I believed in it enough that the resistance, intense at first, didn’t last. We’ve had three computer-free Family Adventure Days so far. Fluffy has greeted each one like an oppressed ‘tween, (“UGH! What horrible FAMILY  thing are you forcing me to do TODAY!”) but by the end of the day, he’s admitted to having at least some fun.

Mostly, we hang around the house, all of us, all day long. Sometimes we yell and gesticulate wildly in the air. There’s a lot of singing. And talking. We crack each other up. We get on each other’s nerves.

Dave pulls his pants up to his armpits or hangs his growing belly over his belt and dances like a bafoon. Fluffy races about doing his battle stories. I fret about dying while I putter around the house, cooking or sorting or playing or reading or cavorting. I sit in front of my altar each morning where I write a daily gratitude list; I sing African spirituals in the Ku’umba Community Choir; I plunk on these keys; I fantasize about the new Children’s Learning Cooperative.

I’m not sure what we do is even called homechooling. I think it’s just called living.

And every day, a part of me feels like an outlaw,  like we’re all getting away with something.