So I stayed up until three in the morning last night watching this documentary. It was moving and brought me to tears several times. It was uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. I can only imagine the living Hell that these parents have to call life and yet they carry on and fight the fight and are blessed with moments of happiness and big and small triumphs. But the rest of us that don’t live with these children want to turn our heads and ignore the issue, it’s not my child we say. So who will take care of these thousands and thousands of children when their parents are gone?
For me, one of the most poignant parts of the film is where one of the mothers, Hillary, says to the others that the issue of Autism isn’t a civil rights issue (as one parent asserts that it is), it’s a values issue. She very passionately points out that until these children are valued as real and living human beings that nothing will change, not the chemicals in the vaccines, not the research, not the schools’ ability to incorporate a real learning environment, and not the insurance companies. If anyone has this quote please let me know so I can paste it here. The streamed movie doesn’t let you skip around.
Such a powerful movie. I hope you will find the time to watch it.
“…living hell these parents have to call life…” is a bit much, (am I’m usually not that easily offended).
I’m sorry that the comment was offensive Barb. I truly was not trying to be offensive but from the parents I have spoken with who live with a child that has autism and even from watching the movie these are the types of descriptions they give. Of course they have moments of beauty and peace and great joys in their parenting journeys as well but they are typically interspersed between a vastness and depth of loneliness, loss , grief and fear that some attribute to a type of “hell”. My comment was not said to diminish the joys and quality of life that these children and families can and do have but rather the constant and ongoing challenges, searches, hardships, advocacy and upheaval that they must carry, and usually alone with little reprieve from family and friends. I was simply trying to portray the gravity of what these parents go through.