Hey, y'all, welcome back to the Don't Mom Alone podcast.

I'm your host, Heather McFaddean, and this is the place where I get to walk alongside you

and connect you with people and resources so you know that you don't mom alone.

And in this episode, number 515, I get to connect you with

three moms, Carrie, Kate, and Adrian. I also have a boy sitting right in front of me, a young

man now who grieves his place in the world, who's trying to figure out where he fits as he straddles

neurotypical and neurodiverse so acutely. I refer to grief in terms of autism as paper cuts,

and I wish I could tell that new mom and dad that one day you're going to wake up and the grief

is completely erased from your life. It's simply not the case. It's just the sting of a paper cut.

I think it's a first. I have three guests and what makes this even more exciting. It's kind of like

we're showing you how to live out, don't mom alone, because these three women have a commonality

of mothering children on the autism spectrum,

but they have very unique experiences, which is so great.

I feel like as moms, we don't have to all be the same to be in community.

So today, Carrie Carello, Kate Swenson, and Adrian Wood are here because they all got together

and wrote a book called Autism Out Loud that covers a huge variety of the joys and challenges

of parenting a child who's been diagnosed with autism or neurodiversity. And so today we're barely going to

scratch the surface, but we're going to cover the hidden and unexpected grief of special needs

parenting, how autism can magnify stress in your marriage, how these diagnoses can impact

sibling relationships, the joys and the hard, and what these

women really need from their friends and family. If you are a friend of someone or family,

this is where you listen in. You lean in, you turn it up, you pay attention. Please connect with

...