Let me be frank, I’m a bit of a pack rat. I come from a long line of them – on both sides of my family. We keep stuff…especially stuff that someone in our family, sometime, might someday use. That being said, I have a lot of…well, stuff.
We moved into our current home nearly 5 years ago. While I’m embarrassed to admit this, we actually have some boxes that had not been opened since I packed them 5 years ago; that is until this past weekend. You see I’m preparing for a Garage Sale. Our neighborhood hosts one annually (and does the promoting and obtains necessary permits) and since this is the first year we haven’t had a direct conflict, I decided it was Time (with a capital “T.”)
Along with a bunch of junk that I unearthed this weekend (that I can’t believe I actually kept, much less packed into a moving box), I’ve unpacked, uncovered and started preparing lots of paraphernalia we used when Ethan was a baby and toddler. We kept just about every reusable baby item possible to save on expenses because we planned to have two – maybe three – children when all was said and done. And, if simply going down memory lane, remembering Ethan’s sweet and precious early years so vividly while sorting through these items wasn’t enough; when we purchased this home, I was expecting our second child. I have always loved babies (even as a little girl and teenager) and loved, loved, loved having a newborn. I was so thrilled that we were expecting again and had such dreams of the kind of older brother Ethan would be. But, I lost our second baby before we could move in.

With Mother’s Day around the corner, I have been busy preparing gifts and cards to send off to my absolutely wonderful mother, my grandmother and my mother-in-law. I’ve also been contemplating what I thought “motherhood” would be about before Ethan came into our lives…and, before Autism came into our world. I knew that parenthood would be difficult and fraught with emotion, yet I didn’t fully understand how deeply that emotion would run.
“Making a decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” ~Elizabeth Stone
When our kids are joyful, we revel in the beauty of the world through their eyes; when our children hurt, we feel their pain and desperately wish to wipe it away. When our children hit a brick wall, we do everything in our power to help them knock it down.
“Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.” ~Marion C. Garretty
In our journey with Autism, I have met countless mothers who astound me in various ways.

The fog surrounding Frisco, Texas this morning directly mirrors the soupy sea of emotion I’ve been swimming through since I heard the news yesterday that Susan Loper, local mother of an 8-year-old boy with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, was found dead. This story is “hitting home” on so many levels. Not only was Susan raising a son with ASD the same age as my son Ethan, but her body was found within miles of our home. With that said, the “hitting home” goes so much deeper for me…
In case you missed the story in the news: Susan was abducted from Gleneagles Country Club where she worked as a fitness and Pilates instructor in neighboring Plano, Texas, early Tuesday morning. When police were notified and began to investigate, they immediately suspected foul play.