Autism didn’t enter our world in the same way it does for many other parents. There wasn’t a burst of language that suddenly disappeared. Nor was there a happy baby who smiled and babbled at us, and then went silent and retreated into their own world seemingly overnight.

We knew my son would have challenges in life from birth. He came into this world at 27 weeks with a scream, then promptly needed to be resuscitated, intubated, and kept on a ventilator for several months.

A few weeks after his birth, my husband and I stood by his incubator while the neonatologist discussed the risks and benefits of starting what would be the first in several rounds of high-powered steroids.

That was the first time anyone mentioned things like global developmental delay, lowered IQ, and other health issues like cerebral palsy.

I remember looking at the doctor with tears streaming down my face and telling her, “You do everything in your power to save my baby.” She nodded, and the team at Medical City Plano proceeded to do just that.

So for us, autism is another diagnosis in the long line of diagnoses that my son has.

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Tracheomalacia. Oral dysphagia. A medically fragile kid with another label: Autism.

When the neuropsychologist gave us the diagnosis, I was sitting on a brown couch with my husband, and Roman was lying across the floor, rolling a Tonka truck back and forth while watching the wheels spin.

Before the doctor said a thing, before we even entered the facility, I knew the diagnosis we were going to leave with.

Autism.

My son is nonverbal. He has problems with getting frustrated easily (likely because he can’t talk). His interests are restrictive. He puts hair in his mouth that he finds on the floor (or your shirt, or the sofa, or the dog bed).

The signs were there since he was an infant, and his sensory-seeking behavior was a big sign of his atypical development. So when we got the diagnosis, I was surprised by my reaction. At first, I felt that pang that most parents feel. Deep in my chest, anxiety welled and my thoughts raced.

Do I need to set up a trust for him?

Will he ever be able to live independently?

Will he ever speak?

Will he ever overcome his sensory aversions to eat by mouth?

Will my little boy ever say, “I love you, mom?”

I felt the loss. I felt lost.

I had to learn to honor my feelings. To recognize the loss of the visions and plans I’d had for my son, and to accept that this new normal was beautiful and valuable.

I had to reconnect with the idea that autism wasn’t the end of the world, but an expansion of the world as we know it with its social rules and covenants.

I had to learn that by going past acceptance and learning to celebrate autism, I was in turn learning to celebrate my son with all his complexities. Celebrating autism is celebrating a life won, a life that has meaning and importance — despite my son’s inability to talk like you and I do.

Celebrating autism isn’t a radical act, but in turn, it’s the act of me loving my child unconditionally through the tough and wonderful parts of his complex life.

Now, I tell everyone who asks that my son is autistic. Not to get sympathy or pity, or to get some kind of gold star from the University of Hard Knocks in Parenting. I don’t tell them he’s autistic so they won’t look at him with a furrowed brow when he starts to echo the intro to the Minions movie in response to someone asking, “How old are you?”

I tell them because autism, in our lives, is just another descriptor — just like my son has brown eyes or has a smile that can light up the entire world. I tell them because there needs to be more representation of kids like my son out in the world. I speak about him being autistic because it’s not something to hide.

I celebrate my son’s autism because in a world where many autistics are murdered by their parents without recourse, shunned by society, and forced to conform to the neuro-typical world, I’m my son’s voice to shout just how valuable he is as a human being.

Even if the world doesn’t see his value, I always will. 

• I celebrate my son’s autism because he’s not damaged, as some people put it.
• I celebrate my son’s autism because it’s a fundamental part of who he is.
• I celebrate my son’s autism because it’s just as much a part of who he is — the brown-eyed boy who echos and scripts and spins in circles. All of it is beautiful and good because he is beautiful and good.

So this Autism Awareness Month, I encourage my fellow Autism Moms — and everyone — to take a moment to celebrate the variety that exists in the whole of the autism spectrum.