They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again.

My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.

A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.

After all, once you know that part of something exists, it stands to reason that the rest of it is somewhere out there, too.

Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.

A lot of the moms of autistic kids I met are so consumed with being their child's advocate that there's no room for anything else - least of all themselves. It's why so many marriages end in divorce, when a child is diagnosed on the spectrum.

Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less