born_stubborn

NOTE! If you're coming in from rageagainstthemanchine.com you're only seeing this post because I didn't take the "362733" off the end of the url I posted. Sorry 'bout that. If you're interested, you can get to the main part of this journal here.

My six-year-old is autistic (HFA/AS), so this story came to me as bittersweet:

A lady in Albany, GA - where I grew up, not where I currently live - used mostly her own funds, since she couldn't get support elsewhere, to open the Albany (GA) Autism Center, after her five-year-old was diagnosed with autism and she found out that there was so little available for autistic children in the southwest-Georgia area.

"Diane Blocker is a force of nature. Maybe in a perfect world she wouldn’t have to be, but she has no choice.

Blocker’s 5-year-old son Garrett has autism. That, as parents of children with the disorder will attest, comes with a 24-7 work order. But Blocker, a single mom, also puts in 40 hours a week as a computer program analyst at Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany, and she spends any amount of time she can steal talking with civic organizations about autism.

Oh, and she also single-handedly opened in January and directs the Albany Autism Center at the Dawson Road Church of Christ."

Read the whole article. I shudder to think how many more people will struggle like Diane Blocker has to bring much needed services to the people in the small-town South, seeing as Albany has roughly 100,000 residents. To think, we had considered moving back. That's even less likely now.