One Michigan Family’s Journey with Autism

Earlier this month, I had a chance to sit down with Cynthia Canty from Michigan Radio. She hosts a popular show called Stateside that covers Michigan events and policy issues as well as cultural/arts news.  Cindy did a wonderful job guiding the conversation in relation to my book.  The interview–entitled “A Michigan Family’s Journey with Autism–was aired yesterday.

One thing that she understood is how my story was in part about discovering how to frame the life one leads, how to find the narrative to make sense of what may be chaotic and confusing.  Of course, there is so much that impacts our individual ability to live with hope.  In my own life (and in reading and hearing of what others have experienced), I know that what happens is not always something that can be transformed or simply erased through some magical narrative.

…and yet too much has also affirmed my belief that memory needs the imagination, that what has left a mark or uplifted us calls for a constant story-making and story-telling.  It is one thing to call something a burden; it is another to let it gain destructive power over time by how we weight the experience, stone by stone, with words and memories that break the spirit.

To be healed, perhaps, is not to dismiss or overlook the harshness of the burden; it is to understand that we have the power of stories to remember and reshape.