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Marriage, Autism Truths and the Ties that Bind

Marriage, Autism Truths and the Ties that Bind

Last updated on: April 27, 2017 at 2:44 pm by Dilshad Ali

Marriage, Autism Truths and the Ties that Bind 2017-04-27T14:44:56-04:00 Dilshad Ali

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This is Day 27 of the Ali Family #AutismTruths – April 27, 2017

Dear Husband and Collective Spouses,

This morning I was talking to my niece – the one who is newly married to a young gentleman who is doing his medical residency. She was telling me about how the challenges of being newly married when one spouse is doing residency and has literally no time to do anything else, (Sounds familiar?) And, I was reminded of a conversation we had a few days ago. Because I remember these things better then you, here’s how it went:

We were watching some silly Indian sitcom where a young couple is encountering awkward situation after awkward situation in trying to find time to just be with each other. I turned to you and remarked – you know, we had a rough first year when we were married – very little of the first-year-fun-romantic-just-the-two-of-us stuff.

You laughed and agreed with me that it would’ve been nice to have a different first year, but that our first year together was a make it or break it kind of a situation.

Here we are, nearly two decades later.

Our first year was marked by the start of your medical internship – a hell of a year in a resident’s life – and your mother spending the first three months visiting with us right after we moved into our first one-bedroom apartment together. (In desi culture, this is not unheard of at all – being with your in-laws and living a joint-family life right from the beginning. But yeah, it was, well, not what I had expected — and in mostly good ways.)

Our first year was also marked by my serious illness that blindsided us two months into our marriage. You still remark sometimes when I put mehndi (henna) on for Eid holidays or a family wedding, how upset you were to see me in the hospital’s ICU barely two months after we were married with traces of my wedding mehndi still on my feet.

D’s pregnancy came unexpectedly in our first year, and it was a tough pregnancy full of high risks and an early emergency delivery two months after we celebrated our first anniversary.

And, though D’s first year with us was beautiful, his second year (also beautiful) was shadowed by my constant worrying that he wasn’t hitting his developmental milestones, which led us to early intervention, which led us to an autism diagnosis right around his third birthday. And that, as you remember was also when I had just given birth to our second beautiful child – daughter A.

Nothing has shaped our marriage and our life together as much as having children and autism in our life. To say it hasn’t been easy is to leave out many details private between you and me. Our life being ensconced in a Muslim, Indian, American and Brown circle of influence has molded into who we are as individuals, as a couple, as parents and as a family. But, it is autism that has been the pervasive influencer through all of it.

Maybe you’d agree with me. Maybe you wouldn’t.

All I know is that we are hitting our 18th anniversary this year, and I’m in awe of us. I know I’m not an easy person to live with all the time, and my own ups and downs of the past few years has not made things smooth for you. I know that we have grown in different directions and in many ways, are vastly different people.

And yet here we are, still together, wanting to be together. That’s nothing if not but from the grace of Allah, shared values and our hard work and love.

So, here’s an autism truth for the collective you – marriage is hard. Marriage within the realm of disability parenting is even harder. The husband and I can certainly testify to that. But for us, it’s better, too. Parenting D, A and H while trying to stay real with each other has led us to cut a lot of extraneous bull out of our life and figure out what’s really important – truth, sincerity, hard work, faith, trust, forgiveness, sacrifice, compromise and love. And for that, I thank Allah, and I thank you.

Love,

Autism Awareness Month 2017

#autismtruths

Ali Family Autism Truths

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April 26, 2017

Finding Room for it All in Autism Land

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April 28, 2017 The Language of Brothers in Autism Land

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