Forever Boy: A Mother's Memoir of Autism and Finding Joy

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So they left to the mall and went directly to the prom store. Every dress Susie saw she said it was the one. At long last, she finally had her heart on this yellow dress. Kevin was so relieved from waiting for 2 hours and a half to finally go home, but still criticised Susie's choice, saying it was ugly, that it looked like a garbage can and seemed stupid on her. However, his mother did not punish him, and still bought him the game. Once home, Kevin darted to his room to play it in peace. Kate Swenson joined me for the second time on the Turn Autism Around podcast. You can find her first interview in episode 70. Kate is a mother of 4, and her first son, Cooper was diagnosed with autism a few months before his 4th birthday. She has created an amazing platform through her blog Finding Cooper’s Voice and her paid Facebook group of which I am a member, Coop’s Troops. Mary: And there's a lot of professionals there, too. Yeah, I know a lot of the guests that I've gotten on the podcast have been through Coops Troops and from some of your lives. And I had the IEP women on Amanda and Oh, Kirby, Amanda and Kirby on I had your daughters.

Forever 21 Forever 21

The world is such a cruel place to anyone who is different. And there is nothing I could do to change that. A best friend may not talk to you every day. She might live in another city, or even a different time zone, but she’s the first one you call when something happens that’s really great or really hard.” — Unknown It is a strange experience to go from calling someone your best friend to not calling them at all. And while losing your best friend is not an easy thing, don’t lose faith. Enjoy the memories you had with this person, and trust that your new best friend is somewhere out there looking for you too.

Kate Swenson – Turn Autism Around Podcast Transcript

But in time I learned not to let these people limit my child’s future. Professionals are here to help us and often they do. But they don’t have a crystal ball or the ability to predict a child’s future. Regardless of whether they end up being right or wrong, the one thing we can’t let them do is destroy our hope. A strong friendship doesn’t need daily conversation, doesn’t always need togetherness, as long as the relationship lives in the heart, true friends will never be apart.” — Peter Cole Mary: The mom of Cash's Voice on, and I'm going to have Jess on in a few weeks. So. So it really is a great community for networking, for information and for a lot of support, which is great. So would your book Forever Boy? Is it more fiction nonfiction? Is it the same kind of writing that we expect on Finding Cooper's Voice and Coop's Troops?

Forever Boy, A New Autism Memoir with Kate Swenson Forever Boy, A New Autism Memoir with Kate Swenson

Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that some people only enter your life as a temporary happiness.” —UnknownBest friend: someone you can only stay mad at for so long because you have important things to talk about.” —Unknown But the gift of acceptance was still elusive. Some days, even weeks, I would walk around thinking I had made it and then something would happen. [A relative], just four months younger, would sing me a song, and I would be leveled, blindsided by the grief that seemed to lie dormant and then resurfaced when I least expected it. Mary: I'm sure it's going to help many, many thousands, millions of people over time. So what are your hopes for your future, for Cooper's future, for your book, for yourself or your family? What are your hopes? Self-care. It’s a buzzword that makes most special-needs parents cringe. We don’t have time for extras in our world. Once I counted Cooper had on average seven additional appointments a week on top of school and being a kid. Think of a combination of speech therapy, occupational therapy, play therapy, feeding therapy, medical appointments, and appointments with his social worker. I also had another son to care for, and a house to manage, and a job to work. Self-care was not a priority.

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We three may be an off number of best friends, but nothing goes odd in between us. Everything is even.” —TD Quotes for ex-best friend Life is about finding people who are your kind of crazy. You don’t have to be crazy to be my friend, but it helps.” —Unknown Never forget the people who are the reason that you need help, stay with you when they need help, and leave when you need help.” —Unknown Kate: We do. And we have two PCAs that we love, but they're at college right now. So finding help here is one of the problems that we have. We've never really figured out the mystery of finding help and good help. Mary: Yes, yes. So I always start out with the same question. Now you are on Podcast 70, which we're going to link in the show, notes MaryBarbera.com/70. And we always start out with, describe your fall into the autism world so you can get the real detailed version in 70. But can you just for people who haven't ever heard of you? Kate Swenson, I don't know where they've been, but can you just tell us how you fell into the autism world very briefly.

Literature Text

And opening up and being honest about our day-to-day struggles and my heartache didn’t come easily to me. So I had pulled away from most people. My friendships were suffering. I sugarcoated the challenges with family. I wanted to believe if I just kept going, and kept doing more for Cooper, that one day, he would get better. But it wasn’t happening. Autism had woven its way into every aspect of my life and had consumed me. If you have a best friend that you can talk to about anything and they won’t judge you, never let them go.” —Unknown

Bad Boys for Life (2020) - IMDb Bad Boys for Life (2020) - IMDb

Best friends are people you don’t need to talk to every single day. You don’t need to talk to each other for weeks, but when you do, it’s as if you’d never stopped talking.” — Unknown Use italics (lyric) and bold (lyric) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part Good friends are like stars; you don’t always see them, but you know they are there.” —Christy EvansKate: Oh yeah. And I mean, any mom, I think that shares on social media, you will get shamed about your kids dirty noses and the sugar they eat and dirty car seats. It doesn't matter what it is, but when you have a child with a disability? Your questions get a little bit heavier than, you know, should I take the pacifier away, should I try medications or do I visit this natural path or do I in? And those are questions that seem to anger people sometimes or potty training questions. I mean, it's hard to talk about those things openly and honestly. So when I started this paid group, it was really so I could have a place to say, you know, my kids got the best of me today. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. What do you use for anxiety? All those different questions. And that's how the group is using these mommas. Ask each other these things and they're not shamed or yelled at or bullied. And that's worth every penny you think. Hi this is my first story, inspired from Tempestprincess ( tempestprincess.deviantart.com) and her story tempestprincess.deviantart.com… Mary: Yeah, right. And that comes with a double edged sword because the more followers you have, the more people with, you know, that aren't going to like you, the more hate you can get, the more famous you can get. And I think you did outline that a little bit in your book how you did have a viral video. Mm-Hmm. I think we talked about it last time and it went viral, right? And that's... Is this the year that you’ve decided you’re too old for presents? I sure hope so! Happy birthday, babe!” —Unknown