Its the night before our first 5K and I am working on my playlist for my run. I wanted something that would keep me going…remind me why I’m doing this…

I RELY on thinking about T’s fight to motivate me…it was creating enough anger inside that running became the perfect outlet to vent all that out. Except something has changed recently. I finally came to terms with the fact that my son is different and that as much as I feared the label “special needs’, the truth of the matter is, he does..(have needs that are different and specific)..and so all that anger that I had, has given way to a slightly calmer, more accepting version of myself..

Well crap…didn’t I time that wrong? In all sincerity, the last 3 months have been one of the biggest roller coaster rides we have ever been on…all we could do was focus on survival…getting through it…just getting through it. But we realized something. Survival is simply what its like to be a parent.

Regardless of T being Autistic, he’s still a little boy who, like many many other little boys his age, is in that stage that struggles to communicate what they want and when they can’t they get frustrated. He just happens to get a bit MORE frustrated and acts out physically to compensate.

And so life has changed for the better. I now realize why Autism Speaks has the 100 day tool kit, we are almost to the day since diagnosis and this is the first “bright spot” I have seen.

I head into this run, not angry…but excited about accomplishing this goal and working towards some new, healthier ones…