After Minnesota’s Fraud Stunned America, Another Reckoning Is Due

<![CDATA[No matter how many times I see a nonspeaking autistic person missing, hear sirens, brace for seizures, wrestle to prevent violent self-injury, or learn about a nonspeaker’s death, I stop breathing. It takes a moment to calm my panic, listen for my son’s noises, and pray before I can breathe. Parents of profoundly autistic children don’t actually know what rest is because rest means risk. Risk means death. When you raise a child with severe autism for three decades alone, you face death frequently, existing in a state of perpetual hypervigilance and fatigue. Life is one act of caregiving or rescue attempt after another. I have forgotten what it is to live without the weight and threat of everything. The only people who care are the ones in the same boat. ]]>