Red cordial does not make me crazy!

Generation Rescue to the rescue

Today was a big day. Today I had organised to meet the people from Generation Rescue. My plan was to make them the USA beneficiary of my charity Magic Wardrobe Auction. I knew for me to make a difference and to really raise awareness and acceptance of autism worldwide I needed to link countries together, so that we were united in our attempts to help our children. And so, two days after Kai went off to camp this was it – my moment to really do something worthwhile, to really effect a change.

So I drive out to Sherman Oaks, the roof off the car, the wind in my hair, the California sun shining down and warming my skin, the winding road reminding me how far I have come and yet how far I still have to go.

I think about what I am doing and I realise that I don’t really know what I am doing. I am drawn to these people somehow knowing that I can learn from them but not really expecting anything from them and not even sure how they are going to take me and my humble request to be a part of my quest.

I wonder what I am going to say. I wonder if they will care. I feel like a very small fish in a very big pond. I have left my job, my life, my son’s school, my friends – everything, behind on some crazy whim that my destiny lies in me healing my child and somehow believing that it can only be done here, on the other side of the world.

I have no job security..haha what job? I am certainly not made of money (I’m crashing at a friend’s house) and a lot of people think that what I am doing is sheer madness……also described in the media as “going from bad to worse”….but it isn’t enough to keep me still or quiet.

I simply must see what is drawing me to these people. From the moment I read about them in the paper six months ago I just knew I had to go and check them out. These people seemed to really be doing what they said they were doing. They were not all hype and politics, these people were passionate parents willing to take a risk, go out on a limb, heal their kids and stand up and say so in the hope of helping others. My kind of people!

I wanted to make them a part of my journey, wanted to raise some money to keep them doing what they are doing in the hope that it would filter down into Australia and help our kids as well. I want to be a voice of hope for others but I realise that unless I find the solution for my son I cannot in all good conscience write a book without one.

And so I find myself standing outside their door. It looks to be a small house on a quiet street. I stand outside the door feeling small and inconsequential compared to this amazing organisation. I ring the bell.

A girl called Emily answers the door and tells me to wait in the foyer. I am nervous. What am I doing here so far from home? I then meet Candace and she shows me around. This place is amazing and a little like the Tardis from Doctor Who. It is in fact a huge centre of healing. They have a yoga room, a meditation room, a room for the mums to have some time out……….it is beautiful and peaceful and filled with photos delivering messages of hope, love, devotion, determination and change.

We sit down at a large table and I start to tell her about my magic wardrobe auction. I explain that it is not really anything right now but I am preparing for when my book is finished so that when I have a voice then I can put it to good use and raise some money for amazing organisations such as theirs. It’s all very business like and I am very nervous and then like a summer breeze blowing in from the ocean Stan, the president of Generation Rescue floats through the door and welcomes me with a great big giant bear hug.

He has an open face and a big cheesy grin and he tells me this hilarious story of why he is late cause he HAD to get this exercise bike from his garage to his office so he could lose some weight and he borrowed the plumbers car cause he had to do it right NOW and now it was here he was going to get fit….. and I just looked at him and I loved him straight away. This was a male version of me. And suddenly I felt like I didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, I just needed to be me.

He was open and honest and real and warm and all of a sudden I felt like what I was – a parent looking for a way to cure her kid. That was why I was here. Forget everything else, the hype, the hoo ha, the chasingoprah, the stupid feeling that I somehow have to justify my actions to the petty people back home for judging me wrongly and harshly and for belittling me for turning my back on a TV show that no longer held any meaning to me. Nothing else mattered.

And as Stan and I shared our journeys of our children and their autism I suddenly felt complete. I am whole again. I am now in a place where I don’t have to be anything but me. I am not who I was on TV which was never ever me and I was certainly not who the media portrayed me as. But here, when nothing else matters but the next few months with my son I can be a mum doing the best she can to make a better life for her child and that is much more valuable than anything else in the world. I am home.

I listened to Stan and his story of healing his own son with autism. I listened to all the work Generation Rescue had done. I took in how much knowledge they have and their plans of what they hope to do.

Australia has nothing like this. I was so lost and had resigned myself to the belief that my son was how he was for the rest of his life. I realised just how little I knew and just how little support and knowledge there is even in the medical fraternity. No-one had helped me make my sons life any better. He was simply handed a diagnosis and expected to just get on with the rest of his life. No one ever offered any solutions or hope that life could be different or even any better.

But in two hours, these people convinced me that I not only CAN but WILL heal my child.

Seriously, I would have been happy walking out of there with a book, some pamphlets and some guidance on how to go wheat and casein free. Instead I walked away realising that our journey has only just begun. I have found my way to a place where people know there is something better and they know exactly how to do it.

I cannot tell you how much they lifted my spirits. Just talking to someone who had a kid like mine, who understood what it felt like to have one sided conversations your whole life, to only ever talk about cars and soccer, to only ever have your child cuddle you when you grab their arms and put them around you. Someone who got that when you take a kid with Aspergers to Disneyland, it is not the happiest day of their life.
People who looked you in the eye and said you are not a bad parent, your child is not a bad kid – they are sick and they need our help and you know what? We have the answers!

The conversation takes many twists and turns and what I realise is that Stan has the same wicked sense of humor I have – something I know I have developed to stay sane or alive…whichever comes first. And for all the pain that is in our hearts there really is a joy that we find in life even in the midst of our despair. We find ourselves making jokes about the fact that we, as parents would well and truly be on the spectrum as well.

I tell him that my sons paediatrician said that he would at the very least diagnose me with adult adhd and for a long time I have seen a lot of Aspergers in myself. More than I would ever have admitted to anyone. But here I felt safe – for the first time in a long time. These people don’t know me and so I can be just that – ME!

Then Stan whips out these lollipops he has created, claiming they will do me a load of good and demands I try one now. And in the spirit of taking this crazy trip wherever it takes my son and I , I do exactly as he says. It tastes good – far too good to be good for me surely. All of a sudden my crazy nervous energy disappears and a strange sense of calm envelopes me like a warm blanket on a cold night.

He tells me it is Methyl b12 and I have no idea what it is but I realise it has taken all my good energy and sent it to my brain and all the bad energy that makes me hyper (and has my whole life) has suddenly gone away. He notices it, Candace notices it and we all laugh. This is like drugs but a million times better cause well, its not drugs, not even medicinal ones and for the first time in years I feel grounded. He is some kind of Sharman medicine man surely. And I love that I have just done exactly what I have told my son to never do – taken “candy” from a stranger. Too funny!

I realise that I have so much to learn. I realise that on the other side of this journey I will have so much to say. I realise that this is why I am here. This is why all the crappy things that happened to me in Australia happened because I HAD to come here. I have to BE here. I HAVE to heal my son. And I have to share my journey with others so that they can do the same. And I intend to do exactly that.

My book is not nearly finished. It is only half done. The first half is in Australia. The second half is here in America where I will do what these people tell me to do, I will follow every step, learn everything I can and hopefully give my son a much better life than the one I was willing and convinced I had to settle for.

I am so excited I want to burst. I left there feeling so ecstatically hopeful that I cannot wait for Kai to come back from camp so we can start this amazing life changing journey. I got so emotional telling my friend Rach that I cried (just a little bit and happy tears!!!) and then started reading Jenny McCarthy’s latest book “Healing and Preventing Autism”. I only got to page 5 and had already learnt more about my son’s Aspergers. Things I always thought were just annoying habits are in fact part of his diagnosis.

Seriously, my head hurts from all that I have learnt today. My life starts now. Forget everything from the past – nothing else matters. What matters now is every step I take from this moment on. Everything I have done and all that I am has brought me to this place at this time and there is nothing that can stand in the way of me doing all that I can for my beautiful boy Kai. Bring it on!