"Persons with intellectual disability enjoy a special gift to emotionally connect with others on a deep level. May God let us, all, recognize and benefit from their God-given gifts. Persons with intellectual disability are 'blessed with a soul that is too large for their bodies.'" (aboriginal belief) Source: Ideal-Way: Seeing the Ability in Disability

Our children with autism, I increasingly believe, have come into this world vibrating at a higher frequency to hold the energy up for the rest of us to expand our consciousness. I and others believe their high numbers (1 in 88–however it had to manifest into this world, as well as others with developmental disAbilities, which are also on the increase,) are a part of the 2012 and beyond shift. They are wise souls. It our gift and our opportunity to learn from them. Perhaps with their filters and defenses, with their purity and lack of prejudices–which they seldom lose as most of us do by age three–they raise and hold the consciousness for the rest of us and teach us through their example and through their gifts and what we must learn in serving them. Perhaps those with higher functioning autism, the Temple Grandins and Dena Gassners, have come to help the rest of us piece together the enigma and better understand our special children. My autism mother friend, Gayle Lee, has taught me the most about the phenomenon and she writes about it her her book, AWEtizm.

I am grateful to have given birth to one of these special souls. The journey is challenging but crazy rewarding and amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Grace Walker Goad, for choosing me to be your mother. I am so honored. I love you very much, you precious, precious gift of a human being!

Happy Birthday, Grace. Eighteen years flew by in a freakin' flash.

"The days are long but the years are short." ~ Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project.

Photo: Lisa Linn Manley, taken at the Nashville Film Festival, 2012.