Dancing in Isolation

A title of an old song I liked... but also how I feel so much of the time right now.  I don't know if it is really or depression is just a cruel mistress, but I am struggling right now with my place in the world right now.  

I found a great entry in a blog with an introductory paragraph that I completely identify with...

"Even the most social parents may have difficulty maintaining prior friendships after their child is diagnosed with autism.   As I think back on my journey, it is not that hard to see how the isolation insidiously crept into my life.  Looking at the nature of friendships, it is painfully clear how isolation can develop after your child is diagnosed with autism."

I feel lost a great deal of time, that I don't really have a place in the world other than as mother to my children.  That's not good.  Yet I am completely unsure how to move forward.  To compound things, I am clinging to a friendship that isn't completely healthy for me.  I am just down and frustrated.  I am hoping time to regroup with the end of the school year.  

I get political again...

I get so angry when I go by the clinic on Sudley Road - the same people who run on a "pro-life" platform cut the social safety net for the poor and disabled every chance they get.  They debate the right to education, deny community based care, preferring locking people away in institutions.  How is that pro-life?  All politicians take money from big lobbies like health insurance and then they hem and haw when confronted with actually providing coverage and care for things like autism or other developmental disabilities.  The medical establishment works less for a cure or treatment for my son and more for diagnostic testing so people like Jimmy won't come into the world.  I guess it is cheaper and easier.  Yet no one acknowledges this, certainly not those pro-life protesters.  You can't say abortion isn't a political issue - I have heard that one before.  The 40 days of life protest that happens twice a year - before Easter and before Election Day.  By timing alone, they make it very political.

I post this not from the "I'm absolutely pro-choice" - the Jimmy experience has been life changing.  The world would be a sadder place if he wasn't in it.  Life is precious.  I firmly believe that.  Yet abortion is often what happens if a disability is discovered gestationally.  And the people who are out there are tacitly supporting this political agenda to deny care and to kill people who are considered "unsuitable", whether or not they realize it.  Why they aren't standing out at town halls and demanding moral consistency on this is obscene to me. 

One of these days, I am going to stop with Jimmy and I ask them about this.