We’d stopped trying to go out in public—no grocery store, no dry cleaning runs. I couldn’t risk it. I stopped answering the phone when the school called saying I’d have to pick him up; I let it go to voicemail. I’d had to leave work so many times that I had to give up my law practice.
I gave up everything. My credit is shot. When your child is throwing a fit and trying to run out of the house and into traffic, really that’s the only priority you can think of. I’m very organized, but I couldn’t keep the appointments with the school and the psychiatrist and the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and Department of Mental Health (DMH) straight. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to write the appointments down—I was on the phone with one eye on my son. To be totally honest with you, I was ready to voluntarily give up custody. I love my son, as much as you love your children, so you will just have to imagine how many sleepless, hopeless years it takes to make a person come to that decision.
Then my DCF worker told me about the Carson Center. I got a lot of help from them. It took a couple of years to really turn things around, but you know, they started with what mattered to me most. I wanted my son to go OUTSIDE again, so they helped me find a way to get some safety fences between my yard and the road.
I’m sure I was crying about a lot of things as I stood there, looking out of my window in the middle of the night at those fences. They meant safety. They meant sunshine and fresh air. They meant I wasn’t alone and I didn’t have to do it all by myself. They meant somebody understood and was listening.
My Carson Family Partner called me every day. I mean that. Every day, even Sunday. I did not know how much I needed to say until I started talking. I didn’t want to talk with a therapist. The Family Partner had raised her own child with autism. She got it. Period. She knew how crispy fried I was. How I couldn’t think anymore. She also helped me figure out where I needed to step forward. I needed to go to the school meetings. In fact, I needed to volunteer, get involved. I needed to take my son out into the world as he managed himself better. To get back to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter Dinner and my own sisters and their families. I’d given up our lives and hadn’t even noticed where or when I could start getting it back.
My daughter can read now. They said she never would. I’m sitting outside as I tell you this story, and she is doing just fine at an afterschool program. I am thinking I am going to start practicing law again. And when I do my pro-bono work, it’s going to be for a family like mine.
By JAC Patrissi
