"My life wasn't meant to be this difficult!"

I read an article about a jet-setting executive in the film industry who got involved with yoga. Yoga worked its magic on him and, as it can, turned his life around 180 degrees. He went from Hollywood riches and fame to living extremely simply, while working to improve the lives of terribly impoverished children in Cambodia.

He was working in Cambodia one day with these kids, who were living in a toxic waste dump that looked like the apocalypse, when he got an "emergency" call from LA. It was an actor having a meltdown because the private jet he was to ride in didn't have the right amenities for him. The actor was quoted as saying, "My life wasn't meant to be this difficult!"

Ironic, right?

And yet.

After we read that article, Blue Eyes and I started quoting this line to each other. We go places where "normal" families are having "normal" times. Parents are off socializing with each other while their kids are playing together somewhere else, and we --

Well, we're usually with Joseph, soothing him if it's too stimulating, or helping him to learn some new RDI objective, or intervening so that he can interact socially with his peers.

And it's easy to look around and say, "My life wasn't meant to be this difficult!"

Or was it?

Yoga's main principles are the niyamas and yamas -- roughly translated as the do's and don'ts of spiritual living. One of the yamas is non-envy. Its corresponding quality, which we are meant to cultivate, is contentment.

I work with non-envy and contentment. I watch my ego wishing things were otherwise, wishing we could be one of those normal (and, therefore one assumes, happy) families.

And yeah, I get sucked in. Sometimes way in. Then I get to drown in self-pity for a while, and I feel isolated and the world seems so dark.

Then, by some grace, I eventually remember: it's not out there, it's in here. It's an inside job.

Yoga calls contentment (santosh in Sanskrit) the supreme virtue. And I remember that the circumstances in my life are not my business -- they are God's business. My business is what I do with those circumstances.

Sister Gyanamata, one of Paramhansa Yogananda's great disciples, is quoted as saying, "Your religion is tested in the cold light of day." Having a child with autism is as cold and light a day as I've ever experienced.

Gyanamata also said, "Change no circumstance. Change only me."

And so, remembering who and what I am -- a spiritual being having a human experience -- and what makes me happiest, I pull my mind out of the delusion of wishing things were otherwise. I open to embrace this moment, with gratitude and acceptance.

This is not some fake "tra-la-la, everything is great" kind of attitude, but the harnessing of all my strength, all my resources, to pull against the strong downward current and reside in that place of peace within.

Our life is not as simple as some people's appear to be. But if I truly believe that there is a Father/Mother God who gives us exactly what we need for our highest good, then how can I possibly believe that this is an accident? Or that it should be other than it is?

Fighting it, resisting it, blocks the flow of energy. As Byron Katie says, "If you fight with reality, you always lose." Exhaling and letting life be as it is opens that channel between me and the Divine, and I feel the contentment of knowing things are exactly as God would have them.

So, God, I thank you for the remembrance that there is so much more going on than I can see. I thank you for this beautiful boy and for the magic of having him in our lives.

Change no circumstance. Change only me.

Wow.

Oh, poop!

Who would have thought that poop would loom so large in our lives?

It's such a natural thing. You eat, you poop, you sleep.

Well, one out of three ain't bad. Actually, no -- it is bad. Yet another example of autism being counter intuitive.

Many children with autism have gut issues. Joseph's is constipation. It was there from day one. At an infant check-up I remember asking our pediatrician if I should be concerned that Joseph appeared to struggle a lot, and only managed to poop about every two weeks. She assured me that this was fine -- nothing to worry about.

Note to self: do not trust your doctor.

On the other hand, we owe this doctor some thanks. It was more of her "advice" that got us to our first biomedical doctor. When Joseph was around 2 1/2, I went to see her with my worries about his constipation. I told her how hard I work -- with figs, prune juice, smooth move tea -- just to make sure he goes every few days. Not to worry, she said. Once a week is often enough.

So I relaxed. And Joseph didn't poop.

Within a couple of weeks he was spending most of his time on the floor, knees tucked under his belly. He'd look up every now and then, smiling as usual, and then he'd fold over into what I assume (now) was a tummy cramp.

We started to get really worried. He dragged himself around like his body was too heavy to manage. He was cranky. He slept more horribly than usual. His eyes glazed over.

Our RDI consultant said, Go see a biomedical doctor! Now!

So we called one in the San Francisco area and managed to make it in on someone's cancellation within a relatively short time.

The doctor examined Joseph and said, "This is a very sick boy you have here."

From that day on, we were committed to having this kid poop.

First of all, why didn't he poop? I think it was a combination of things: gut issues (things just didn't work well in there), food allergies messing things up and, lastly, a resistance to the actual feeling of pooping. We'd watch him get this look on his face and then he'd cry out, "No! No!"

He was stopping the poop.

Fiber became a household word. We knew the fiber content of everything he ate. Lots of water. Lots of exercise.

Three months went by. Still things weren't moving well. The doctor said, Let him have enemas!

Oy. For a year we did enemas, pretty much every other day. Joseph hated them. We hated them. They were traumatic all around.

But, darn it, they did the trick.

S-l-o-w-l-y things got better. After being gluten and casein free for two years, things started to do what they were supposed to do. Joseph began to get over his reluctance to that poopy feeling. Other doctors and healthcare practitioners jumped in with other great ideas. A star chart worked well because, after 5 poops and the 5 resulting stars, he got to pick out a new toy.

And now, ladies and gentlemen! He poops every day, often twice a day! Usually at his own initiative!

Our naturopath, Dr. Glen, tells us that, just as a sick person will go on a downward spiral, so too a person who is healing will go on an upward spiral. And we see this with Joseph. Everything is getting better: sleep, poop, vocabulary, social skills (a little!), imagination, and more.

It is great to be going in the right direction.

Poop still looms large in our lives, but we are all starting to lose the trauma around it. It seems like, as far as Joseph goes, poop happens.

Finally.

Not sleeping: where the spiritual rubber meets the road.

Joseph used to wake up every single night...several times...for several hours at a time.

Night after groggy night.

Year after dreadful year.

It was torture. I nearly went barking mad.

I could easily have become a child abuser. The closest I came was in the middle of one particular night. Joseph had woken and was sitting in his room, playing (loudly) with his toys. I stormed in like a raging alcoholic, grabbed his toys and threw them out of his room, bellowing with all my might. He cried from fear.

Sigh. I am not proud of that moment. But I was almost insane. Truly.

When we went to our first biomedical doctor, I begged -- BEGGED -- her to give us some drugs to make Joseph sleep at night.

She refused. "Address his gut issues!" she said sternly. "How well do you sleep when your stomach hurts?!!"

The thing is, Joseph always woke up happy and stayed happy, no matter what hour it was. It didn't seem that his gut was bothering him.

But we took the doc's advice and addressed his gut issues.

That year he started waking up only once a night instead of two or three or four.

The next year he actually slept through the night now and then. We started to notice a direct correlation between pooping regularly and sleeping regularly.

Now that he poops virtually every day, he will go a month or so sleeping through the night! Then we might have 8 or 9 days of waking up for an hour or so. Then we're back to sleeping through again.

Is it a virus cycling through that is waking him up? Is it knowing that preschool is coming up? Is his gut still bothering him? Are we doomed to this forever?

As for me, my sleep is still traumatized -- thanks for asking. I have given myself permission to continue to use sleeping pills until Joseph makes it through the night for three months straight. After that (if the day ever arrives), I'll start to wean off of them.

The thing is, sleep is a very primitive, basic need. What specialists and teachers often point to as behavior problems in our kids can often be traced simply to the fact that they are not sleeping well. When a kid (or an adult, for that matter) sleeps well and regularly, you will sometimes see an entirely different kid.

So we've come a long way with Joseph, but we're not all the way there yet.

I once went to a satsang with Kali Ma, a spiritual teacher. She spoke about the different things we take refuge in: alcohol, drugs, chocolate, the internet, etc. Her guru advised her to take refuge in only three things: God, Guru, and satsang (other spiritually-minded people). This was a major growing point in her spiritual life.

I have become sane enough with sleep that, when Joseph wakes up in the night now or pops up at 4:30am, I realize that sleep is not a refuge that I am often allowed. I give it all to God: my fatigue, my energy level, my thwarted desires.

And when I'm open to God like this, I feel Him holding me, giving me strength when I feel I simply can't make it.

So. Take refuge in God. I like it. I practice it. It works.

And sometimes I take a power nap in the afternoon. :-)

The Value of Valtrex?

Jenny McCarthy's journey seems to be both loved and despised by other autism families. For me, I take what I like and leave the rest. I do believe that there is value in much of what she proposes, most particularly that the epidemic of autism is the canary in the coal mine. I believe it is a sign that our toxic environment is destroying us.

Joseph was never vaccinated, so we can't blame autism on that. However, when I was in labor I had an infection and they blasted me with antibiotics. Then, after Joseph was born, they did they same to him. My belief is that he came in with an already-compromised immune system, and this tipped him over the edge.

Our naturopath, Dr. Glen, added an interesting addendum to this theory of mine: since my gut was damaged by the antibiotics and Joseph existed solely on breast milk the first six months, there weren't the proper ingredients in my milk to help his gut to heal. Voila: autism.

Back to Jenny McCarthy. One of her colleages is a man named Stan Kurtz (www.stankurtz.com), who recovered his child from autism -- as did Jenny. I am not very knowledgable medically, but my understanding of Stan's pet theory is that many of these kids have an often-undetectable virus in their system.

He feels that the body will try to fix the crisis of a virus before addressing the problem of discharging heavy metals from the system. And we all know that children with autism have high levels of heavy metals in their bodies. They can't seem to dispose of it the way that typical children do.

So if lab tests don't pick up a virus, how can you tell there is one? According to Dr. Glen, an underriding virus will show up now and then in peculiar ways: unexplained fever, flu symptoms, eczema, that sort of thing. It will cycle in and out.

This does happen with Joseph every month or two, so we've decided to give Valtrex a try. We are very grateful to do this with the help of Dr. Glen, who is working to support Joseph's gut, elimination and detox processes while we undergo the Valtrex trial.

It's been a whole day. I am a little bit hopeful and a lot interested to see what happens.

Will it be Valtrex Schmaltrex or Valtrex the Miracle? Or something in between?

Stay tuned.

And good night.