05/28/2026
My mom paid the ultimate price of an early death, leaving young children behind, because the proper help and medical intervention didn’t exist for a parent like her.
If it did, she would never receive it. Because her suffering was brushed off and ignored by her family, the people around her and her doctors.
On the outside, they saw someone who kept making the wrong choices but on the inside, her body and brain were working against her.
Both failing her at the same time.
She pushed through because she had children.
She pushed through until the day she died.
We are putting impossible weights on the shoulders of disabled parents.
We are suffering right in front of everyone while they scramble for an excuse to not feel empathy for them.
“Should’ve thought about that before you had kids.”
“They’re not my kids so I don’t care”
“It’s your fault for not staying abstinent”
The comments are endless and help NO ONE.
I am physically and neurologically disabled.
I didn’t start feeling the impact of my physical disability until my 2nd child was born, and I believed I was able to still push through because I was still able to control my executive functioning
Even then, I was still convinced I was able to push through and have a big family like it was my dream to have since I was a child. I always wanted to be a mother and have a big family. That’s what the world said was the dream - the ultimate goal in life - and I fell in love with it.
But I didn’t know my body would start breaking after more children
Especially not after HG pregnancies.
My doctor didn’t listen when I said I wanted my tubes tied, she told me I was too young
She told me I had beautiful children, that I might want to have more.
My body wasn’t breaking like it is now, and I never knew it would. So I did have more children, not knowing I was autistic, not knowing my body was predisposed to risks that my mom went through.
When I got weak, I was always told to just push through… no matter what.
So I did… because that’s what our society has normalized.
I just kept pushing through.
Until the cracks started showing
Similar to my mothers
Cracking in all the same places
Leaving all the same trails of grief
I always said I would break the cycle but it’s not so easy in a world that ignores dying parents
Parents are dying right in front of their children, and being ignored by a world full of money and top of the line healthcare advances
From drug addiction
From domestic violence
From mental health struggles
From poverty
Being autistic puts you so much more at risk to experience these things and also more at risk of never being able to break from that loop of behavior without intense help and knowledge of the disability you have.
We need to stop ignoring parents
The ones we’re currently ignoring who are drowning because they don’t know how to help themselves.
We are ignoring a crisis that has repeated over multiple generations.
We have the tools to be the generation who stops this.
But we won’t ever get anywhere ignoring the people who are raising the next generation, the ones who are disabled RIGHT NOW and crying for change 💔
Disability doesn’t care if you’re a parent.
It also doesn’t care if you think you are able bodied enough to push through.
It will bring you to your knees relentlessly in front of everyone you love.
It’s way past time we start building a world that’s ready to truly address this crisis.
