The Safe Life or the Life You Dream About?

There are days when following your dreams sounds incredibly brave. And then there are days when it feels completely irresponsible. I don't think we talk about those days enough.

We love the stories about people who took the leap. The ones who walked away from security, followed their passion, built something incredible and proved everyone wrong. But we usually hear those stories after they made it.

We don't hear nearly as much about the middle. The sleepless nights. The second-guessing. The checking of the bank account. The quiet panic of wondering whether you made the right decision. The moments when you think, What the hell am I doing?

I know those moments well. Because I am a single Autism mom raising an amazing teenager who is getting closer and closer to adulthood. And there is absolutely nothing safe about that.

The Future Is Coming Whether I'm Ready or Not

When your child is little, adulthood feels so far away. You are focused on getting through today. Therapy. School. IEPs. Meltdowns. Communication. Appointments. Insurance. Fighting for services. Celebrating milestones that other families might never understand were milestones at all. And then somehow, you blink.

That little boy isn't little anymore.

Suddenly, people start talking about transitioning into adulthood.

Employment. Independent living. Vocational services. Guardianship. Benefits. Transportation. Life skills.

And the question that I think lives somewhere in the mind of almost every parent raising a child with a disability starts getting louder: What happens when I'm not here? That question can absolutely consume you if you let it.

As a single mom, there isn't another parent sitting beside me carrying that fear. It's mine. The decisions are mine. The responsibility is mine. And when I think about taking risks with my career, my business and our financial security, that weight becomes even heavier.

Because I'm not just betting on myself. I'm responsible for him, too. That changes everything.

Safe Can Be Very Tempting

There have been plenty of times when I have thought maybe I should just choose safe. Get the paycheck. Take the benefits. Work the predictable hours. Stop taking risks. Stop trying to build something bigger. Stop lying awake thinking about payroll, equipment, expenses, sales, growth and whether the decisions I am making today are going to pay off six months from now. 

There are days when that sounds wonderful.

Because chasing a dream is exhausting. And chasing a dream while raising an autistic teenager as a single mom?

Some days it feels absolutely insane. But then I look at my son. And strangely enough, I realize that he has been teaching me how to do this his entire life.

His Entire Life Has Been About Goals

From the time he was little, there has always been another goal.

Communication goals. Therapy goals. Educational goals. Social goals. Independent living goals. Safety goals. 

Things that come naturally to many people have sometimes required an incredible amount of work from him.

Break the goal down. Practice. Repeat. Get frustrated. Try again. Celebrate a tiny victory. Move the finish line. Start again.

I have spent years telling him:

Keep going. You can do hard things. Don't give up because something is difficult. Look how far you've come.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I needed to start listening to my own advice.

How can I ask him to push beyond what is comfortable if I am too afraid to do the same?

How can I teach him that goals matter if I abandon mine because they scare me?

How can I tell him not to let fear determine what he is capable of while allowing fear to determine what I am capable of?

Our goals may look completely different. But the work behind them isn't all that different.

I Need Him to See Me Try

I don't need my son to grow up and become an entrepreneur. I don't need him to build a company. I don't need his dreams to look anything like mine.

What I desperately want is for him to understand that his life is his.

I want him to know that other people don't get to decide what his future should look like simply because he is autistic.

I want him to dream. I want him to set goals. I want him to work toward something that matters to him. And I want him to understand that sometimes you will fail.

Sometimes things won't work. Sometimes you'll make the wrong decision. Sometimes you'll have to start all over again. And none of that means you stop.

I can tell him those things a thousand times. But I would rather show him. I need to model MY behavior, as I have done for years to teach him the life skills he has developed.

I want him to see his mom scared and still moving forward. I want him to see me fall flat on my face and get back up. I want him to see that hard work doesn't guarantee success, but that fear guarantees you will never find out what might have been possible.

This Wasn't Supposed to Be My Life

This is the part that is sometimes difficult to say out loud.....

This is not the life I planned. Not even close. I didn't plan on being a single mom. I didn't plan on Autism becoming such a huge part of our lives. I didn't plan on therapies and IEPs and advocacy. I didn't plan on spending so many years fighting for things that my child needed. I didn't plan on becoming an advocate for other families. I didn't plan on building businesses centered around inclusion and creating opportunities for people with disabilities.

I didn't plan any of this. But life has a funny way of destroying the map you carefully created for yourself and handing you a blank piece of paper.

And you have a choice. You can spend the rest of your life mourning the road you thought you were supposed to travel. Or you can start drawing a new one. So that's what I did. And somewhere along that completely unexpected road, I found a version of myself I don't think I ever would have met otherwise.

A stronger one. As my Mom would say, "a more stubborn one". LOL A much more exhausted one. But also someone who finally understands what matters.

I Have No Regrets

Have I made mistakes? Absolutely.

Have I questioned decisions? More times than I can count.

Have there been moments when I wanted to run back toward everything that felt safe and predictable? Yes. There still are.

But I have absolutely no regrets. Because every decision brought me here.

Every hard season taught me something. Every failure forced me to grow. Every door that slammed shut made me look for another one. And every time someone underestimated my son, underestimated me or questioned what we were capable of, it added a little more fuel to the fire.

I am proud of what I have built. Not because it is perfect. It isn't.

Not because I have "made it." I haven't. I'm still very much in the messy middle.

But I built it while raising my son. I built it while advocating. I built it while working 60+ hours a week at one job, coming home to working an additional million+ hours a week at another. 

I built it while worrying. I built it while exhausted. I built it while scared. But I built it anyway. And that matters to me.

Maybe the Biggest Risk Is Never Trying

There are no guarantees when you follow a dream. That's the part nobody can make inspirational. You can work incredibly hard and still fail. You can make smart decisions and still get it wrong. You can believe in something with every ounce of your being and discover that you need to change direction.

That is terrifying when people depend on you. Believe me, I know. But I also know myself well enough to know what would haunt me more. 

Never trying.

Getting years down the road and wondering what could have happened if I had just been brave enough to give myself a chance. Wondering what I could have built. Who I could have helped. What opportunities I could have created for my son and for others. And what example I could have shown my son. That scares me more than failure.

Someday, I Hope He Understands

Someday my son may look back at this chapter of our lives differently than I do right now.

Maybe he'll remember the long days. Maybe he'll remember coming to work with me. Maybe he'll remember watching me build something from almost nothing. Maybe he'll remember me being tired. He'll definitely remember me telling him what to do. Or not do. Repeatedly. But I hope he remembers something else.

I hope he remembers that his mom believed dreams were worth fighting for. I hope he remembers that I didn't always know what I was doing. I hope he remembers that I was scared sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. And I hope he remembers that I kept going anyway. Because one day I won't be standing beside him telling him to keep trying. And honestly, that reality hurts more than I can put into words.

One day, he will have to navigate this world without me. So while I am here, I want to give him everything I possibly can. Not just a business. Not just opportunities. Not just life skills. I want to give him an example.

I want to set the goal. Do the work. Take the chance. Fall. Get back up. Keep going.

No, this is definitely not the life I planned. But somehow, through all the unexpected turns, the fear, the exhaustion, the tears, the victories and the moments when I genuinely had no idea how I was going to make everything work... It became a life I am incredibly proud of.

I am proud of what I have achieved. I am incredibly proud of the young man my son is becoming. And despite all the uncertainty that still lies ahead, I am genuinely excited about our future.

I don't know exactly where this road is taking us. And for once, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it because, for the first time in a very long time, I feel more secure in myself. More confident. More independent. More certain of who I am and what I am capable of. And I believe this stronger, more confident version of me is reflecting onto my son. He's watching me grow while I'm watching him grow.

Maybe that's one of the greatest gifts this unexpected journey has given us—we are both learning, changing, becoming more independent, and discovering just how much we are capable of.

Together.

Maybe following your dream isn't really about being fearless. Maybe it's about being scared to death and deciding that the dream is still worth taking the next step.

And if my son learns anything from watching me build this crazy, unexpected life, I hope it's this: You don't have to know exactly how the story ends, but you need to be brave enough to start writing it.