To write two books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of blog posts, I’ve interviewed slaves in West Africa, coffee farmers in Colombia, sailors in Nicaragua, and garment workers in Bangladesh.
And I’ve never had the weight of a story overcome me all at once and leave me a puddle of a man, like the story I wrote for Muncie’s Facing Autism project – Healing is Believing.
When I write for a Facing Project, I record the interview and, for the most part, just rearrange the storyteller’s words into something with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I ended Healing is Believing with this…
It’s okay if you cry. It’s good. It’s part of it. It’s part of the sadness and the sweetness. It’s all tied together.
The tears honor the journey.
That’s what Angela (not her real name) told me. She was consoling me!
This was a really heavy story, and I was nervous that I couldn’t do it justice. So I was thrilled that after I wrote it and sent it to Angela, she wrote this to me…
It made me feel really proud, which isn’t an emotion I usually associate with all of this (there are so many).
Angela and her husband faced autism, and now they help other families do the same, including mine (my son Griffin is on the spectrum). If it weren’t for the Facing Project connecting us, I would’ve likely never met Angela or her husband, both who we’ve welcomed onto Team Griffin.
Please read Angela’s story and share it with everyone you know facing autism.