"Don't You Stuff it! Don't. You. Stuff it, Leisa!"

I had just finished a harsh yet intimate, soul-digging session with my spiritual teacher. The truth hurt. The truth shocked. We both cried. The truth that surprised me but yet I knew was spot on was that there's an aspect about my disAbility journey that I've never grieved. Instead:

I stuffed it.

It was too painful.

Ironic, huh?

"Am I a phony?" I asked.

"No" was the answer.

I had shut off my heart to my deepest hurt. It was buried in my womb. The one I forgot I had.

The continuum of life as I know it in this world of my daughter, is:

"Normalcy." Asperger's. And, the profoundly affected end of autism.

While long ago I accepted that we edged somewhere near that far end of the spectrum, I ignored and buried the grief that we had lost all sense, all hope of normalcy. Sure, I visited it, only to sigh, quickly stuff it down and be glib about it.

"Don't wallow!"

The words from my mother suddenly echoed in my memory and made their way onto my tongue.  The admonishment never to wallow in pity came from the lips of a woman with a hard-edged heart whose psyche bore the pockmarks of an impoverished depression-era, familial hard-knocks youth….

"Your mother was right about one thing," said my teacher. "Don't wallow."

His next words were so emphatic, I reached for my ink pen and spiral-bound journal and transcribed them onto the blue-lined pages:

"Grieve it. Heal it. And move on through it!"

Am I a phony? I asked again, my head fuzzy, spinning with these revelatory thoughts and emotions."I mean, I've spent the last nine years-plus writing and speaking about the disAbility grief experience. And, right now I'm ramping up the road show with another book and more speaking. And…I haven't grieved myself?!

"You have not grieved the loss of normalcy."

He dared to give voice to my quiet thoughts. The ones tucked into the dark crevices of my soul, where the door that sheds light on them is only creaked open in small increments but rarely….

If I had a "normal" daughter, in addition to Grace, then I would experience those milestones that other mothers experience, my teacher reminded….You know the ones: First dates. Proms. The college selection process. Graduating with real diplomas. Shopping for a wedding dress. A grandbaby swaddled in my arms. I'll never have those things. It's okay. It's okay. I quickly slam the door and move on in a frantic mania of creation.

The fact is: It is okay. And these losses never negate the gift of who my child is. But the trip up came in slamming the door on this element of my loss.

The rest of the series:

The Thing I've Never Grieved, Part II

The Thing I've Never Grieved, Part III