Uplifting Our Autism Journey in Poetry

Our family - Kes, Nai and me, Emelda “E” at Nai’s first school dance

Back in middle school, I started writing poems, carrying journals inside an oversized backpack — determined to create whenever the words tumbled out of me. In a world of endless noise, writing remains a pathway to stillness and deeper presence, awakening intuition and connecting me to God in ways which are difficult to fully articulate. All I know is Spirit shows up, Mamas, and these sacred whisperings spring forth as poems holding hope, grief, joy, compassion, empathy and an array of other emotions.

Rumi once said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” I stumbled across this quote years ago, but the meaning (for me) did not come to sit within my soul until I became a mother, and our parenting journey broke away from “normal.” Nai’s autism diagnosis spins us through a continual cycle of learning how to best support her, whether through therapies, doctor visits, or strategizing with her team at school.

Although our days are overwhelming at times, I refuse to lose myself (being a good mother doesn’t require suppressing our identity). Creativity has always nourished me, it is oxygen for this weary soul. Motherhood means I write in the margins of any given day - journaling, blogging, scribbling poems and ideas for longer essays onto my laptop and inside spiral notebooks - in spare moments.

Some days, guilt creeps in and I begin considering the running list of things to handle for Nai. But I return to the quote from Audre Lorde, a brilliant writer and thinker, who insisted art is our voice:

“... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” - “Poetry is not a Luxury” from Lorde’s book, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Wounds Become Wings, the poem uplifted in the video below, dropped into my consciousness during the summer of 2019; it is inspired by our Nai, and the multitude of ways she opens us to deepen our embodiment of love, compassion, empathy, advocacy, activism and collective care.

Each line is a sacred reminder - despite how often this world attempts to eviscerate our community and lived experiences, we matter. Our children matter. And we will not be shamed into silence.

I invite you to close your eyes and receive “Wounds Become Wings” into your heart space; and while you are here, if you have a moment, check out more of our story, “Embracing Differences, Our Journey,” and my essay, “Mothering at the Intersection of Blackness and Neurodiversity” (published in Spoken Black Girl Magazine, page 104) here.

Emelda “E” De Coteau is a certified mindfulness coach, trained in TSD Mindfulness and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and the founder of When Motherhood Looks Different, LLC,  a community-based small business helping Mamas of neurodivergent kids and Moms who are neurodivergent center mindfulness and connect in community by offering events, resources, and mindfulness coaching; this work is inspired by her beautiful neurodivergent daughter Nai.

Her writing, which focuses on social justice, anti-racism, neurodivergent parenting, well-being, and spiritual activism (within the progressive Christian tradition), has appeared in Good Faith Media, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Good Life Detroit, Beautifully Said Magazine, The Baltimore Times, and on the Pray with our Feet website (a podcast & community she co-leads with her Mom, Trudy) where she blogs and shares devotionals on spiritual life and activism. it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.