Mafe Maria: Personal stories by autism parent mentor, Maria Stultz

You can’t ever get angry at me!

Two months later, the mystery leak is fixed (also the one concerning my soul), and Randy just finished patching all the holes. Challenged by the time I spend talking with Randy, Joaquin protests, directs angry gestures towards Randy, and this all leads to one of my favorite conversations these days… A topic of great interest to Joaquin: Anger. His desperate attempt to not ever feel me angry at him. These days he reminds me daily: “You can’t ever get angry at me!”; he threatens me with severe consequences, and even tells me today he believes the fear of such consequences will keep me from getting angry at him throughout his lifetime.

Oh, how I love these times with him… This took us to me sharing with him my understanding on the yucky feeling I’ve felt when my parents have gotten angry at me. Yes Joaquin, you’re totally right. That sharp pain in your heart I have felt too. That horrible discomfort to realize your parents are not approving of you. Ugh! I have felt that too. Joaquin stirs in curiosity; he wants to know more about the times my parents have gotten angry at me, the times when we’ve fought. So I told him about the time she was afraid and didn’t trust me, the time he felt unloved, the time when I couldn’t acknowledge something really scary about myself and she reminded me, and I was so hurt and afraid I couldn’t talk to her or see her for the rest of the day, and then I needed to separate myself from her for a while until I got strong and made friends with that piece of me and replaced the stressful stories…

And Kiki tells me again: “You CAN’T EVER get angry at meeeee!!!”…

So I hold his hands, look at him in the eyes, my heart oozing love, and I remind him that it may happen again, if not with me, it will for sure happen with other people — he can’t control us all, and I tell him:

“Believe me I am doing my best to become more and more aware, and practice catching my anger before it gets expressed… But I want to give you a much better gift” — he pays attention — “I want to share with you everything I’ve learned about the possibility of remaining okay, peaceful, and strong, even when others get angry at me… Even when others don’t love me.”

God, how I love my little life partner, who shares his days with me, with whom I hold hands as we both climb the same mountain, and every step he climbs helps me, and every step that raises me supports him too. We dance together, get lost together, discover each other together, expand and contract, and expand and contract, and EXPAANND… And boy do I feel grateful for my extraordinary life… Until a cloud blinds my view again… But I know how much we’ve climbed; I can barely see where we started, and I can see the colorful blanket of clouds we have left behind… ??

Clumsy verbal approximations of the buzz around me right now:
GRATEFUL
PERFECT
WHOLE
NOW
ALWAYS

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One comment:

  1. On , Amparo wrote:

    Escribes hermoso los sentimientos. Tratando de ser lo mas fiel posible a ellos.