I’m thinking about letting go of the word ‘autism’, never using it again, refusing to let the word cross my lips.
Why?
Because every time I say the word I give it power, and I don’t want to. I want to give my son power instead.
Every time I use the word ‘autism’, I empower the medical/government machine that uses this label for a collection of symptoms classified as psychiatric by Kanner in the 1940’s
What does that have to do with my kid?
Every time I use the word ‘autism’, I am giving families who do not have a child with autism permission to tune me out. And they do.
Every time I use the word ‘autism’, I am talking about the worst thing that’s ever happened to my son and my family: Nick’s diagnosis. Do I really want to call up that negative energy forty times 
a day?
Nick meets the autism criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). But The DSM autism diagnosis doesn’t mention two critical issues: how my son got there and what happened to his body along the way. The truth is that my son was hit with too many vaccinations and antibiotics too fast. That pushed him over his toxic threshold and is what landed him with a set of neurological behaviors and developmental issues which fit the autism diagnosis. There is no mention, though, in the DSM of the autism bio markers, the G.I. disorders, seizures, or mitochondrial dysfunction which are the hallmark of autistic regressions like my son’s.
In fact, the DSM can’t even agree on the autism diagnosis. It’s created a huge semantic struggle, which may result in children losing services, and was perhaps designed to cover up the staggering rise in children with autism.
Autism is where we are coming from, not where we are going.
Taking ‘autism’ out of my vocabulary will be tough. I talk to autism moms, write about autism on TMR, participate in conversations about autism politics. How will I continue to do this without saying ‘autism’?
The autism label does give us a way to find each other, share a common language and get stuff done.
“Did you see that great article on Age of Blank?”
“Will you be going to the Blank One Conference
in Chicago next May?”
“If you are worried about wandering you should check the great stuff they are doing over at National Blank Association (N_ A).
If you are having trouble viewing this video click here or cut and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LztZu5s0-QU
It will be hard to change this behavior. I may start by noticing how many times a day I say the ‘A’ word. That ought to be pretty telling. I could wear a rubber band around my wrist and snap it every time I say ‘autism’? I could make myself put a dollar in a jar?
I wonder what it’s like for my son to have me saying ‘autism’ around him? I need to ask him because I have dug myself pretty far into the autism community and with the identity as an autism mom. I’m very proud to be associated with this smart, hardworking, savvy group of parents. But, am I giving my son enough permission to get better and to leave it behind?
Another piece to this puzzle (excuse the pun) is how quickly I lose track of what I want to be called and how I want my son to be identified. The trauma of autism has trashed our separate and regular identities and merged us into a symbiotic soup of sad labels.
So what am I going to say instead? Is there a label I like better?
You could call Nick ‘special needs’, but I’d rather you didn’t. I hate that term. I can assure you my son is very special, and I don’t mean that in a Saturday Night Live Church Lady kind of way. I mean that you would be very lucky to know him because his heart is so pure.
It’s dangerous talking about these labels because they are so personal. People get touchy about it. For another mom, ‘special needs’ is a term that resonates nicely, and I don’t want to take anything away from that. I’m just talking about my own stuff here.
For me, the ‘special needs’ mom conjures up a saccharin sweet image of a selfless, all giving mother. She is a martyr who has stuffed all of her needs behind those of her disabled child. Society is comfortable with her. She is safe. People feel sorry for her and they revere her as a Madonna figure. They say things like, “I don’t know how she does it?” But what they are really thinking is, “Thank God I’m not her.” The special needs mom is nice. And she is over there, away from you. Because your child is either special needs, or they are not.
I am not so nice all the time.
I am agitating for change. I am restless and political. I may have created a temporary and evolving peace with my situation, but I am not satisfied. I am inconvenient.
I could go the safe route and identify as an autism mom. I could be really safe, I suppose, and identify as Special Needs. But after what has happened to my son, and what is happening to our nation’s children, I choose the politically charged and sometimes dangerous path of identifying Nick as ‘vaccine-injured’. So that makes me a ‘vaccine-injury’ mom and, in many people’s minds, a WACKO!
Society does not think I am safe. I am too close. Too close for comfort because vaccine injury and autism are not black and white issues. There are many shades of gray along the continuum of injury and diagnosis. We are everywhere as well. We are not ‘over there’. Our kids are at the bus stop and in your child’s classroom. We live in your neighborhoods and on your cul de sac. And these days it’s not a case of “autistic or not”. It’s a continuum of physical and neurological health, and every one of the world’s children is on that continuum.
I absolutely believe this. Whether your child is thriving, or struggling with asthma, ADHD, constipation, dyslexia, diabetes, sensory processing issues, food allergies, non-verbal learning disorder, migraines and on and on and on…they are all on the same continuum as my autistic son. Time to stop tuning out moms; turns out this is about your kid after all.
You get more of what you focus on. Do I want more autism? No.
I am the mother of a Vaccine-Injured child (where we have been) who is recovering (where we are headed).
~Alison MacNeil
AKA: Mama Mac – who used the word ‘autism’ 29 times in this piece. Anyone have a rubber band?
For more blogs by Mama Mac click here.
My kids had ASD, but were never vaccinated, so I really can’t call it vaccine injury. This is good, though, because vaccines are not the only or even solo cause of ASD, etc. They are part of a huge, complex bunch of crap being loaded on us (and stolen from us) all the time.
This so makes perfect sense……………we have let them use the word “autism” as part of the cover-up. Vaccine-injured from now on………………..hard though it may be. Great article. xoxo
Alison, I swear we are on the same energy frequency girl. Katie’s IEP still says “autism spectrum disorder”, but it will not after this year. I haven’t used the A word to describe her in ages, because she’s not. She sustained a traumatic brain injury as a result of the vaccines she received on the recommended schedule. And she’s recovered from that injury very nicely, thank you very much, something that can’t be done if one is truly autistic. “They” want to tie a nice little ribbon around the box she is in and pack it away on the “differently abled” shelf because it’s uncomfortable. But she doesn’t belong in a box. She can’t continue to heal in that box. She can only continue to heal if we call it what it is and treat it as such. Thanks so much for writing this. xoxo
I disagree, sorry. The power of the word depends of a power it was said. I use word “autism”, but I’m over it. For me, dad of almost five year old autistic boy, this word helps to indicate boys special needs to other people. Word “autist” in my mind equals to “diabetic” or “astmatic”. It should be normal in society to say, when somebody offer You a cake: “Sorry, I can’t eat sweets, I’m diabetic.” It helps surrounding people to understand You. So, why we should hide word “autist”? Just because this word has a “power”? Don’t give the power to this word and that’s it
Thank god for reading about the you all. I am in the UK - there are no DAN Doctors - everybody believes they are bron with it and it is genetic. I am disgusted by the lack of urgency over A and its rise and the total lack of concern by those in power. I am angered the media blackout of this issue and any other surroundning it. The heft amount of evidence and parents screaming all over the internet is ignored. I want action and I want to stop another child being harmed. I want to change things. Thank you for being such great role models in this battle of good verses extreme evil!
How about the fact that what our kids have isn’t autism at all but rather a traumatic brain injury caused by environmental assaults?
inocinjusitis, that’s the word you’re looking for.
Pronounced
Constructed as follows:
“inoc” from inoculation
“injus” from injustice
“itis” a suffix used in pathological terms that in extended senses could denote abnormal states or conditions, excesses, etc.
Therefore, inocinjusitis … The injustice of abnormal state created by inoculations.
Vaccine-injured tells the truth. “Autistic” sounds too passive. Like, it ‘just happened” one day. Vaccine-injured explains it and tells people to be aware that this is real. I like it! Lots of kids have been injured by vaccines. It is nigh time we admit that as a society.
I like to say Autism, the result of vaccine injury. I WANT people to know vaccines CAN & DO CAUSE AUTISM! Unfortunately people still don’t get it.
Oh girl, we are so done with that word. He was sick, he’s now healthy. (No thanks to mainstream medicine). Done and done.
That’s why we started calling IT “Mr. A” - as not to speak that name and give it power - or the power to diminish, separate and segregate.
So let’s call it VI for vaccine injury and the kids VIPs!
Awesome. My favorite line, “I am inconvenient.” Thanks.
I tell people as often as I possibly can that my son is vaccine-injured. Then I throw in that doctors like to say he has “autism” because they don’t want to see/know/admit that they caused his, and many others’, catastrophic brain and immune-system injuries. I am on board with you, Alison! We need to speak the truth over and over again because truth resonates, and it will eventually reverberate through someone’s mind when they finally have the eyes to see where their child falls on the continuum, when they finally see that their child, too, was injured by our nation’s severely toxic, never-studied, horrendously-damaging, for-their-wealth-not-your-health vaccine schedule. Keep up all your great work, Alison!
Im with you all, if nothing more than to give my daughter a chance to rise above her label and for me to look at her differently,
Yes I am with you 100%. I hate the word autism. That word limits the vaccine injury to these innocent children. It makes it so easy for the pricks that have caused this nightmare to continue their lies.
Bang on! It is all vaccine injury. Thank you for your courage and love and thoughtfulness.
My blood boils when people ask me if my son has autism….and I ALWAYS say, no, he is vaccine injured. It never stops amazing me how many grown adults have to ask what a vaccine is as in “oh a SHOT shot of what?” or the person says, “Well I only ask because my child, nephew, next door neighbor ect has autism” to which I say, “You mean they have a vaccine injury that resulted in autism.” 9 time out of 10 I will be told there is no connection and that I need to stop listening to Jenny McCarthy…to which I shoot back, “Honey it was Mom’s like me who where already a part of Generation Rescue who got Jenny help, she listened to US first.” ugh. My son was normal one day and gone the next. When I was in college in 1979 autism was a word most educators didn’t know and what LITTLE was known, we were taught it shows at birth. In 1992 nobody in my small town had seen a child regress into autism..until that year and it happened to 3 boys all about the same age…all living within 2 miles of each other…all vaxed with that new hepB vaccine…Bless you on your quest….you can say autism, but follow it with a vaccine chaser and stand back and watch the fall out happen….
I can totally relate to this Alison. Sometmes I feel like I am lying or caving in when I use the A word to describe my son. The enemy has convinced the public that autism is “genetic” and that our kids were just born with weak genes. This is what the enemy wants everyone to believe . We know there’s so much more to the story. I hold back when I really want to blurt out that my son was born normal then he was vaccine injured and that some kids are more sensitive than other to vaccines but noone is pre-screening them, that CDC is corrupt and doing the bidding of the pharmaceutical corporations, that they’ve conditioned people to believe the lie that vaccines are 100% safe. I’ve seen people roll their eyes at me or their eyes will gloss over and my words turn to blah, blah, blah in their heads. I want to smash the lie like that woman in the 1984 Orwellian Apple commercial who throws the sledgehammer at the evil man on the screen.
It’s like walking a tight rope- I want to tell the truth but I don’t want to alienate people either. If I keep my mouth shut, it feels like I’m aquiescing to the lie. It feels like a betrayal.
I completely agree with you in your explanation of the continuum. It’s not that some kids have vaccine reactions and others don’t. The cold, hard truth is that every child who receives a vaccine, is injured in some way. After all, haven’t we also seen a rise in childhood autoimmune disorders, cancers and countless other syndromes? If we can believe that, then we can begin to understand that we as moms and parents are in this together. My child is not vaccine-injured because moms like you were brave enough to speak the truth despite the popularity vote. I applaud all of you Thinking Moms and I admire you. Thank you for helping moms everywhere to hear the truth.
Time to change our narrative! Love it! I’m in!
Excellent, Mama Mac! I have been thinking along the same lines. Since we learned how much my son hates the term “disabled”, we started thinking about a,way to describe his issues to those we encounter that would assume certain abilities. We decided on the term “challenge” because it implies something that is to be overcome. Aside from vaccine injury, he has some developmental and physical challenges. We also have a new phrase. “There is nothing you can’t do, only things you haven’t done yet.”
Love it!
Hands down one of the best articles I have read in a long time.. I will join you in being uncomfortable and inconvenient.. Love to you and your family.