Autism

What do i care for if you aren't well?

what do i care when a thunderstorm quivers on your brow,

impending signs of a rocking so incessant it's mesmerising,

and in your screaming i hear whispers uttered not by you.

First they said it was a malevolent spirit which i had omitted to exorcise,

then they said it was my utter devotion to my job.

Yet, i hear the muted accusations behind each invisible finger,

you were the product of a mother neglectful, a refrigerator mother, a mother who forgets her firstborn duties

thus i anxiously re-walk a path worn down in search for a cause, a memory of a negligence that cause you such great harm.



i wrote this in reaction to a book i'm reading at the moment which details the history of autism and diagnosis. it denotes the common blame laid at the feet of mothers who were deemed as less attentive to their children's needs--- thereby causing the aforementioned autism). Refrigerator mothers they were called.

It made me angry as i remember someone i know, who had unsolicited and well-meaning advice and diagnoses hurled at her. oh he must have been possessed, and on and on they would insist on a variety of exorcisms, then it became a charge of moral weakness---you aren't firm enough with him, you give in, you are too weak.

Sontag was accurate in her understanding that illnesses were always interwoven with moral universes, and the same rage she feels towards this intertwining is now what moves me.

Sometimes it's shocking the deep harm we cause to others---i grieve for the mothers who must have wondered just exactly what it is they did wrong, and rage on their behalf at those (inevitably!) white male psychiatrists/psychologists and psychoanalysts who forget that the costs of their armchair theorerizing and five-second judgement (you are doing your child harm; you did not show care) was to inflict years of agony and guilt for others.

And in our well-meaningness, sometimes less certitude, less posturing is welcome, since what we really need is more patience, less homespun and carelessly given advice and simply more compassion.