Part 3: Protecting Our Mental Health/ Let's Get Through These Severe Autism Summer Blues

Parenting Severe Autism Mom & Host Shannon Chamberlin shares how she and her spouse boost happiness, productivity, and state of mind.  Product links provided in show notes. 

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Shannon Chamberlin: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Parenting Severe Autism podcast. I am your host Shannon Chamberlin. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. This episode is the one that I have been so excited about. We're continuing with the "Let's get through these severe autism summer blues", and I'm focusing on our mental health. Today, I'm focusing on ways that we can help ourselves, reduce our stress response, improve our mood, and improve our outlook and perhaps find a way to reconnect with our child. So right now today, as I am recording this episode, it is the fourth of July. Next to Halloween, this is my favorite holiday. And I haven't celebrated either of those in at least 11 years. I'm sure you know that feeling we are not able to share our family traditions. With our severely autistic child, we are not able to enlighten them on all the fun stuff, all the things that we like to do, no matter what the holiday or what the time of year. My favorite time is summer. My favorite holidays are Fourth of July, and then in the fall of course Halloween. In summer. I love volleyball, I love the beach. I love croquet and tennis and golf and frisbee and you know, anything outside, I love hiking, and boating and fishing and my son wants nothing to do with any of it. We don't decorate a Christmas tree because it's absolute living hell to try and celebrate even that family closeness: and what used to be fun in my family, we don't do any of that anymore. Do you need a little look at us. We all we probably all look the same. I found a group in Wisconsin when we live there for children with autism and teens with autism is what it was. And all of us parents when we would bring our kids to the meeting place for teen swim. All of us parents looked alike. We all had the hurry up, pull my hair in a ponytail look. We all had cargo pants, the pockets just stuffed full of survival things items for our kids and backpacks stuffed the same. You know, the only thing is, instead of the peaceful, happy look that zookeepers have, we have the look that perhaps the animal we're keeping at the zoo has just had their enclosure breached, or maybe the enclosure isn't enclosing the animal anymore, so there's that stressful 'What the hell?' look on our face? Yeah. And that's our summer, isn't it? First and foremost, noise cancelling headphones, we use the type that they sell in the sporting goods section for firearms. It's a necessity for our son. He is also not great with thunderstorms. But I did train him I guess you could say years and years ago when he was about nine, from about eight years old to about 10 or 11 years old. When we would have thunderstorms which are another favorite event of mine in the summer. I love thunderstorms. I love to watch them come in and you know all that good stuff. Well, my kid hates them as is to be expected with autism. But I showed him that when he was scared by the thunder and the lightning, he could yell back at it and he loves to angrily shake his fist and scowl and you know yell some angry gibberish no matter what that's fun for him. So I taught him to shake his fist at the storm and just yell Raha you know, every time the thunder came, so I tried to make it a fun experience for him. And now when thunderstorms come in, he just tells me it's going to storm and he might get his headphones and he might not. So that's pretty nice. But he's not really great with these fireworks at all. Even if it's just a couple of neighborhoods away from our house and they're letting off some fireworks. He doesn't care to watch them. He definitely doesn't care to listen to them. And I'm not so concerned with protecting him from that because you know, I'm just over it. But my main concern as I'm going to talk about in this episode is protecting my mental health and my stress response and making myself happy. I want to share some things with you remember, I am not a medical doctor. I am not a psychiatrist. I have no medical degrees whatsoever. I do study holistic health and medical herbalism. So I've learned a few things about herbs that I'm going to share with you. But you know, anything that you are interested in that maybe I mentioned in this podcast, you should definitely ask your physician about before you start taking them. But you know, just to start, let's talk about some calming rituals for ourselves, we can start out with adaptogens. These are herbs that you can take, they don't make an immediate change in your body or your mind. But they react with your body, and they can help reduce your stress response. There are things like magnesium, which is great for us and our child, actually. So it helps to create a sense of calm, it helps sleep, it helps bowel movements. So for the kid, it's really great, right? But magnesium is - you know, you can purchase it in capsule form, I get mine from NOW Foods online, it's I actually get it on Amazon and a big bottle, I take three capsules every night before bed, and if I don't take them, I don't sleep very well. And when my child experiences a lot of anxiety, I do try to give him a magnesium drink. It's called Calm, and you've probably seen it. But you can look that up. He likes it because it changes color from like purple to pink, it's got vitamin C, it's really good for him. And he knows that it's supposed to do something good for him. So he's very receptive to a point on that, you know, but I think if it didn't have a flavor, and it didn't have a color, he would probably give me a little more flak about it. So you can also get your magnesium from Epsom salts, if you can find a way at least once a week to be able to take a 20 minute bath with Epsom salts and just have some quiet time, maybe play some relaxing spa music and take a soak, that is one of the best things you can do for your mental health. And it just really can help your nervous system as well. So you might have heard of something called ashwagandha. Now that is a primary adaptogen it's known as winter cherry or indian ginseng, it can help ward off fatigue and help keep your mind focused. I have Hashimotos it's a thyroid disease and I can't take ashwagandha but I do have one that my husband likes and I put that in my show notes as well. I get it from iherb.com. And you can actually view my entire summer shopping cart it's got healthy sunscreens and adaptogens in there and it's it's really great. So you're welcome to take a look at that. Another one, You know, mushrooms are becoming very popular and with good reason. Mushrooms are amazing. They're good for so many things, they can clean the earth they can help your body they- you know just all kinds of stuff and there is a nice powder and a nice capsule form. I have my powder in my iHerb cart that you can see it's it's a Cordyceps mushroom powder, no fillers, there's nothing in it but the mushroom powder and you can put that in your smoothies or something like that. It's a secondary of adaptogen so a lot of athletes will use that to increase energy and endurance. Now we do need our energy and endurance because our kids constantly wake us up at about 2am with their fit throwing and their psychobabble you know stuff that's going on. That's what that's how I feel about it. By this time. You know, it's been a long time I've been dealing with it and I just I've started naming them you know different things. But you can also look at something called schizandra Berry and it's a primary adaptogen it promotes liver health and mental clarity. Liver health is so important. I believe the way that I was raised we had a little bit of Chinese medicine philosophy in our household and we believe that your organs are very important in processing negative emotions. So your elimination organs like liver and kidneys actually have to process your negative emotions as well. So a lot of people will have a heavy load on their liver and it many of the people who have a heavy load on their liver have a lot of anger and depression in their life. And so your liver we believe in my household processes these negative emotions and if we're not making sure to take care of our liver and support our eliminative organs with herbs then we're just not able to lighten the load on our bodies. So you know the Cordyceps is a great one for energy and endurance. But that schizandra berry can help promote liver health and mental clarity. Another one that I use for liver is Mountain Rose Herbs has some tinctures and there's something for your liver and eliminative organs in there so I will try to put a link to mountainroseherbs.com and remember, if you are able to click the links in my show notes, then any earnings that I might receive from that a portion of those earnings actually go to help a severe autism family in need as you should be aware by now from listening to some of my other episodes. Another thing that is known to help combat stress, fatigue and depression is called Siberian Ginseng. So that's another primary adaptogenic herb and you might look into that we do need to combat stress, fatigue and depression. You can also check out a tincture of fatigue fighter and that is from nativeremedies.com I don't have an affiliate link code for them but you can check out nativeremedies.com and look for the fatigue fighter that's a pretty good one my husband uses that as well and we do enjoy those. Arctic root is another one that is the Rhodiola so that is basically able to support energy levels and help us feel more revitalized after having you know running the the feeling of being rundown and having headaches and stuff like that. So it's really good just to you know, have these around and keep them in your daily supplementation. Another thing that I really like to use is matcha tea. So matcha is I believe, the best way to say it is it's very young green tea leaves and they're powdered and I try to stay away from a lot of caffeine. Don't get me wrong, I do love my coffee and I like to have a cup in the afternoon as well even though I shouldn't but I just love it. It makes me happy. I do try to support my digestive organs, my liver and my kidneys as well by cutting my coffee with something called Dandy Blend which is chicory root and dandelion root roasted together and it's a coffee substitute. So if you drink a lot of coffee, maybe consider looking into this Dandy Blend it tastes really good and it's good hot or cold, believe it or not. And caffeine is not great in our situation being caregivers of a severely autistic person or persons. Caffeine does not help with our stress response. It does not help with our cortisol levels and it just makes us a little more jumpy, a little more wired. It works in the opposite direction than what we need to do. So what I like is a cup of matcha tea and when I started realizing how good this matcha was for me my kid would get dropped off from school and I had to go you know our driveway was a mile long so I had to drive down to the end of the driveway to pick him up from the bus stop and then drive him home. And so about 30 minutes before I knew that bus was coming I would make myself a cup of matcha tea I would froth it with some coconut milk and it is so calming and empowering. And it is the most amazing drink for me to deal with my child. So I really recommend that you try it I just can't say enough good about Matcha Tea. It gives you focus and strength - physical and mental. It is amazing. It is calming and it just gives me what I need to help me get through the next hour or two after my son has to make the transition from being on the bus to being at home. It takes him about 45 minutes to adjust after a transition - even walking through a doorway so I also have to adjust and Matcha Tea has been the best for me out of all those adaptogens I listed, Matcha Tea is really great for me. Now another thing we can look at is good mood Food. First, we can look at if you're waking up before you would like to and it's not because of your child but you're just waking up, and when you wake up you feel like you just got done running a marathon and you've been busy all night, you're winded or out of breath or just exhausted and you feel like you've just didn't even sleep but you knew you were asleep. That is a sign, I believe of my adrenals being taxed. So what I've learned is that you can take about anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of raw honey before you go to bed. And that helps because your adrenals - actually everything in your body is recharging, cleansing and recharging overnight while you sleep and if there is there are no energy stores in your body for your adrenals to pull from you're going to feel exhausted when you wake up, whenever that is ,and the honey gives us the nutrients- raw honey - gives you the nutrients that your organs need to help revitalize themselves throughout the night so that when you wake up, you can function. So that's something that has really helped me and also we eat it A lot of sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are good mood food. And if you think food doesn't have anything to do with anything, you need to look into that. I will talk about that in another episode of the differences that we've noticed in ourselves and in our severely autistic child just by experimenting with food. So let's recap on that adaptogens such as Rhodiola, otherwise known as Arctic Root, Schizandra Berry, Ashwagandha, Cordyceps mushrooms, and or Siberian Ginseng, just look into those and look into some Matcha Tea, there is no caffeine and it is wonderful. A little bit of raw honey, a teaspoon to a tablespoon of raw honey at bedtime and sweet potatoes as often as you can stand it - you can make them in a lot of different ways and I have recipes for all kinds of stuff. If you want some ideas on that just shoot me an email at contact.parentingsevereautism@gmail.com And you can see my show notes of course with all of this information at psa.buzzsprout.com That's PSA short for parenting severe autism@buzzsprout.com And feel free to buy me a coffee you can click on the support the show link and that will take you to the buy me a coffee page and you can buy me as many coffees as you like I do love coffee. More importantly, a portion of the proceeds from those activities of donation will go to help families of severely autistic children or adults who are in need of sensory or therapy items. Another thing we can look at is Traditional Medicinals tea. Go to traditionalmedicinals.com I believe they've got some really great tea and they've got something for everyone. So you might look into that, look into lemon balm tea and mint tea is great. There's another herb you can get at like mountain rose herbs or bulk apothecary.com. And it's called Motherwort. It is great for being a parent. It's really great for women but men can drink it too. And it just, it's bitter. So you're going to want to add mint or something like that to it but it is fantastic if you're having chest tightness and anxiety like that. Mint and Motherwort have been really good to me. Catnip Tea has also been really good for stress for me, but everybody's different. And so now that I've talked about that kind of stuff, I want to tell you that we are medical cannabis patients. We live in Illinois, my son has a qualifying condition of autism for medical cannabis. And my spouse has a couple of qualifying conditions for medical cannabis as well. And I am just a recreational cannabis user. But I've been using cannabis to get along with my son since he was about eight years old. I've always used cannabis. It's not new to me. But when I feel like, "Man, I just don't get this kid I can't deal with this kid. Give me a break!", I smoke a little cannabis and it's great. He seems to know that I have altered my state of mind. He can look right into my soul and he can see that I am better off now than I was five minutes ago. And it actually seems to make him better off than he was. He gets a little bit happier. He seems to know that he can just mess with me now once I'm medicated,you know. He has a good response to the medical cannabis and my spouse and I use cannabis to get through life with him. When we have to take him to a doctor he is - the best way I can say it is that he goes through the doctor's office hallways and everything like the scene in stepbrothers. When Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are interviewing as a team and they say "We came to F shit up" and then they go through and they just push people around and make them drop their folders and their workload from their arms. And yeah, that's what our kid does. So when we take our kid to the doctor, once we get there, we medicate. We get there early enough where we, you know, won't cause any problems. But anyway, when our when we take our kid somewhere or even if we're just at home and he's driving us up a wall, we use cannabis until whatever he's doing is funny. Cannabis is great. We have a system in our bodies, the endocannabinoid system meant to receive the cannabis, so... The next thing is I think it's important to acknowledge our feelings and validate them. We're allowed to feel this way. You know? We're allowed to feel all of the things that we feel what we once thought before we had kids, if we ever wanted to have kids, we always had all these great dreams for them, and how we might be able to help them have a great life and what we would like to happen for them in the future. We may have dreams for ourselves of you know, climbing a corporate ladder, or owning our own business or traveling the world. Or maybe we're looking forward to becoming empty nesters and doing all of the things with our soulmate, after we've raised our kids and given them the best education and the best possibilities in their lives, and they're out on their own, doing their thing, and now we can just concentrate on the two of us and be happy, and then came severe autism, right? So yeah, we're disappointed, we're hurt, we're angry, we're exhausted. We feel like we're getting gypped we can't enjoy anything. It's okay. It's okay. Acknowledge your feelings. Identify how you feel, and why you feel that way. That's what I do all the time. This is not a quick fix. It doesn't last forever, you have to continually do it. And once, for me, I don't want to tell you how to live. But for me and my spouse, once we've identified what it is-how I feel, why I feel this way, it's time to make an improvement, right? You can't just stop there and just wallow in your sorrow. You have to make it better, right? So let's say I feel disappointed and angry, and gypped - because I have a master's degree and I'm living in poverty. I look like I live in a crack house because my house is falling apart because my kid has destroyed everything. And I'm poor, and there's no relief for me. My state doesn't want to help me. My country doesn't want to help me. My child is just going to do this to me until I die. And then what happens to him? I don't know. Okay, that's valid. You're allowed to feel that way. Now we take a deep breath. We find something on YouTube, we'll watch a TED talk or we'll listen to Tony Robbins or Jocko Willink is one, I believe he was the United States Marine. And I love his talks. I'm pretty sure he's the one that says embrace the suck. And that's basically what I tell myself every day, embrace the suck, you'll get through it. And you just have to get through it, right. So it's just you got to feed yourself, you have to feed your head every day, you take your adaptogenic mushrooms and you eat your good moods, sweet potatoes, and you drink your matcha tea. And while you're doing that, you bring up some motivational speaker and you listen to that person while you're running yourself a bath full of Epsom salts. Ideally, that would be perfect. And then when you get in the bath, you listen to some spa music on YouTube, right? But seriously, you really need to focus on yourself at times. It is so easy to lose our identity. I lost my identity, I became just his mom. I'm his mom, I'm, I'm a mom of a severely autistic child, everything sucks. He hates everything. I love all these things. And he's stomping all over everything I love. And this was my life. Well, that's NOT my life! You have to create a separate place for yourself in your life where that child cannot go. And I don't know, your life is different than mine. All of our kids are different, but they also have a lot of similarities. They have a lot of things in common. And one thing, after I'm done with my little pity party and I start feeling better, I do things to feed my head and turn my perspective around. And I've acknowledged my feelings and I validated my feelings. And I've searched YouTube for a motivational speech about that particular feeling or feelings. Then I turn to enlighten myself about how does my child feel? And I know we're always trying to figure that out because they can't talk or they talk but not about anything meaningful most of the time, and we have to listen in between the lines and decipher - and what am I ever going to do? Well, keep in mind, first of all, you are uniquely suited for customer service. And anyone who would let you work from home and helping them with their customer satisfaction would have a huge asset in you because we are the most patient, the most able to decipher and listen to people and just really hear what the problem is and really figure out a solution. We're uniquely suited for all of that kind of stuff. And I know that we all need money and we can't work because of these kids. So just keep that in mind, working from home is a big thing. I just - that's a another tangent for some other time I guess but um, so let's consider the child's feelings. And my child - just yesterday he - He started sobbing for what seemed like no reason at all. And, you know, sometimes I will hold him and rock him, and you know, just let him snot all over me, and it'll go on forever. Hours, you know, unless I stop it. But this time, I just wiped his face with a very soft, very soft, cold rag. And I you know, I told him, it'd be okay. And I let him cry. You just have to let him cry. But I know that he feels abandoned by his cousins, who he grew up with, for, you know, the first seven, eight years of his life. And I know he feels abandoned by his grandmother. And I know that he doesn't like his grandfather all that much. And we live with his grandfather. And I mean, he loves him, but he doesn't like him a lot, you know. And I know that in order to really reconnect with him, I can watch nature. Have you ever done that? I realized this a couple of years ago, it was really interesting. I was sitting outside watching the birds eat at the bird feeders. And I noticed that there were these little babies out there. And I couldn't tell they were babies until the parent birds came. And all of a sudden, they all the birds are sitting around in their own little spots. And some of them were eating, and some were just sitting and they all looked like birds. To me, they all looked I mean you couldn't tell them apart. You know, they were different breeds, but you couldn't tell their age. And all of a sudden, other birds would fly in near some other birds. They all look alike to me. And all of a sudden, the ones that were sitting seemed to show me that they were sitting waiting for this other bird and they just apparently are now the baby birds. Now I can tell because the parent birds swooped in. And this baby bird who was sitting there and functioning as a normal bird hopping around and looking around and pecking at the ground and just looking normal, all of a sudden starts fluttering and shaking and vibrating and puffing and doing all these weird things. And tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, you know, just Oh, poor me, help me help me. I'm right here, you know? And I realized our son is like a baby wild animal. And I started watching all baby wild animals, how they behave on their own, when their parent is not looking, as opposed to when their parent comes over there to assist them in their life as far as feeding them or just checking on them or protecting them. And our son is exactly like those baby wild animals. It doesn't matter which animal you pick, that is our child. He is fine, unless he sees us come around. Then he starts flapping and crying and whining and shaking and being nervous and pacing. And isn't that amazing? It - many years ago, I started having- about six or seven years ago, I started having the feeling that my spouse and I are hindering his development, we're hindering our son's development. And I, after watching these baby animals and the way that they behave, it kind of solidified that feeling for me that yeah, we as his parents, to a point, are hindering his development. And I feel like he would blossom, if he were not with us. There was the time when we met other parents who had put their children in a placement away from home into an institution or something, you know, and they had autism, and then they put them into a place. And when I learned about that, and I just immediately thought about doing that with our child, I just, I teared up, and I couldn't imagine. And then within a year and a half after that, I absolutely could imagine, yes, please take this child and put him in a place where they can deal with him, and they can help him develop because I can't do it anymore. So it changes very quickly. And, and right now, I'm at a point where I am not that willing to put him in an institution! You know, it just changes. So right now we're in a fortunate part of life. And then who knows what's next. It's just been going up and down for years. This is - we want to talk about adaptogenic - I think this form of autism is adaptogenic as well! And we'll talk about that in other episodes. But the other thing that helps me and my spouse through our lives with the severe autism in our child is music, music with lyrics that we feel, lyrics that get us and how we feel inside, and also music that helps us pick ourselves up and do it all over again, because that's what our lives are all about right now, isn't it? I believe that they - it will change I don't think it's going to be exactly the same forever. But you know, in the summertime, it's really easy to focus on the negative, isn't it? We see all the other people - Hey, stop looking at Facebook, Stop, just stop watching all of this crap. And also, you know, consider stopping media. The iPad makes my son absolutely evil. I would rather he pace the backyard and jump in and out of the pool all day then watch that stupid iPad because his favorite movies, rewound and watched enough in certain spots, make him evil. It's ridiculous. But I really think that it's worth a try to stop the stupid iPad. We have stopped it. And every once in a while, we'll let him use it. But it's a lot different now than it was before. And I'll be happy to tell you about that some other episode, but it just helps us with our mental health to make sure that we're limiting things that bring out the ill mental health of him, you know. So some music you know, I told you last episode about our son eloping and his dad having to watch the gate and having a desolate existence where no one helped him and he was all alone all day long and nothing but his son in his ear with this psychotic stuff coming out of his mouth. And the song that got my husband through that part of his life with our son was a song called Diary of a Madman, by Ozzy Osbourne - you should totally check it out. One that - there's a couple parts of a song that I like - that I actually... my spouse wrote the intro and outro music that I chose for this podcast, every episode has it in there, he's writing a song about and for our son. And that's the music for it. But before I asked him to write that ,what I really wanted was to use a piece of a song by Alice In Chains, and it's called A Little Bitter. And the piece I wanted to use is a verse that just says, 'My god's a little sick, and he wants me crazy', because that's how I feel sometimes with this autism in my son. Another one that got us through some hard times, just kind of, you know, like I say, when we try to change our perspective, there's a song called Under Pressure. It's the one by Queen and David Bowie. Yeah, that's a good one. And on the upswing, there's a song called Just a Matter of Time by John Cafferty. It starts out, and I really, I can't listen to it unless I'm doing it on purpose, because it really does make me cry. It talks about, you know, us compromising in our lives, and maybe not being able to look at ourselves at a certain point in life, because we've gone against everything that we believe in. But then later in the song, it talks about how everything picks back up, and we're Whole Again, and everything came back around. It's just a matter of time. So that is a really good one. Another one that makes me, when I'm just having a really hard time with my son, and I'm like,'Man, why, all the time? All day, every day, every single day? Are you kidding me? I'm so tired of this.' And then if I hear this song, it changes my outlook. It's called I'm Gonna Be, it's by The Proclaimers. And it's a cute song. And I always think of my son when I hear it. I never would have before, but I do now. And I always thought it would be something that you would think of your spouse when you hear this song. You know, before I had a spouse, I had heard the song and I thought, I bet, I bet this would be something for a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband and wife, you know, but no, it's for me, for my son. And the song that really gets me able to deal with a lot of different things... I had, I lost my mom back in 2006. And it was very hard for me. For over eight years, I was severely depressed and dealing with this severe autism, and the song that finally got me out of the mud, and back up on my feet after all those years was the Alabama Shakes the song called Hold On. I still listen to that to this day. And it - at the time, I found that song many years ago now - it actually saved my relationship with my spouse and my son because I didn't have enough room in my life for all of my grief and for them, and for this autoimmune condition that I'm dealing with, you know, I just, there wasn't enough room. So this song got me over that grief so that I could be more present for my family, my living family, and I've always done really well for my son, but I do better now. And now, when things are really hard for us with our son, I still listen to that song. Hold On, because you've got to hold on, you've got to get back up. You got to hold on. I do believe that this autism changes. I think it does get better. And it gets worse and it evens out. Like I said in the last episode. Also, it doesn't hurt to get a therapist. Your friends and family aren't going to understand and they get tired of listening to something that they don't understand. If you're afraid of a therapist intervening or getting the wrong idea because we're so negative sometimes in our talk, then start a podcast or start a YouTube channel! I was going to start a YouTube channel first. But as emotional as I am about everything, I figured a podcast would be better because nobody wants to watch me cry. But it's good therapy. And you don't ever have to even publish it if you don't want to. But you can talk it, talk it out, it's really good. Start a YouTube channel, do something creative for yourself when you can, or you know, include your kid on it. My spouse has been trying to include our son on his music endeavors. They're trying to sing Lion King songs and stuff like that for his YouTube channel. So you know, just get creative. Think about some things that feel good for you that you can do in a small amount of time, every day or every other day. And just make that time about yourself. In addition to attempting to take a relaxing bath, or a nice nap with a cool rag on your eyes, or just anything to get a little bit of peace and a sense of yourself back. You have to remember who you are, I know that everything you've ever loved, has been buried because of your child's preferences. I know that. Find a way to secretly enjoy your life away from your child's eyes. It seems- in our life, it seems like our son does not want us to have a good time. He hates it when I smile, he hates it when I laugh. He hates to hear my voice be happy. And for a while that made me really sad. But then I got tired of being sad, and I don't care anymore. I want to live. I love life. And it's not fair of him to expect me just to lay down and let him do all of his negative shit the rest of my life. That's not how I want to live. I know that is, you know, easier said than done sometimes, but dammit, I am going to enjoy my life. And you should too. I don't think that anything is worth this constant pit of depression and sorrow, the kid is just going to have to accept it. You know, we deserve to enjoy some peace of our lives. We have worked hard, we went to school, we got educations, we were completely employable. And we had every intention of making a wonderful, beautiful life for ourselves. And all that came crashing down once severe autism took hold. But we have to find a way to accept that reality and move forward with a new dream, a new goal. And we might have to change it. And some days, we might have to just give up on that. But that's just for one day, you take a rest, you regroup, and you try it again, the next day. It just comes down to accepting the new situation and making the best of it and resolving to have some hold, and some control over some aspect of your own life without the child destroying it. It's going to be different for each of us. Whatever our interests are, whatever we think we can do to make a difference or feel like we're making a difference. And it has to be something that is not involving our child, I do this podcast and it does kind of involve him. But it doesn't. He doesn't have any idea what I'm doing. He's nowhere near me when I do it, which is why the episodes are usually so short. But it's my way of contributing to society because I can no longer be an employee of somebody because the demands are too high. My son is my boss. Unfortunately, I don't have room for another boss. I've been self employed for a very long time anyway. But now my spouse and I are just - we're unemployable. We can hardly run a business of our own because of the demands from our son. And so in order to feel like a contributing member of society, we have to do something more creative. He is doing a comedy and music youtube channel, I am doing this podcast to help you and parents like you and caregivers like you who just need a new perspective or a different way of looking at things. And that's why I would love to hear from all of you because I could use a new perspective and a different way of looking at things too. We all need help. We all need happiness and just everything that we don't have. Right? So we have to make our own happiness. Hopefully that helps. In my next episode, I'd like to share some information with you about things we've learned in our life when we have applied some lifestyle modifications. Any changes or whether it has, you know, made changes or not. I'd like to share these lifestyle modifications results with you. We've been doing these things for you know, over 15 years, some of them, and I'm going to share that with you. So we'll talk about, just different things including food and the effects that can or cannot have on our kids and you know, just stuff like that! So please be sure to catch my next episode and don't forget to check my show notes at psa.buzzsprout.com If you're interested in any of those adaptogens or the magnesium or the matcha or some of the liver supplements or anything like that, and you know the music recommendations is always nice, too! You can check my show notes for that because the transcript of the show will be there @psa.buzzsprout.com and of course you can email me if you have any thoughts or input at all at contact.parentingsevereautism@gmail.com You hang in there. You're a superhero