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I am a pretty average person by most senses of the word.

I don’t consider myself as anything extraordinary. I have spent most of my life being of average in pretty much every way.

Something that makes me special is my family. When I meet someone and they ask about my family and I tell them about what makes them different I usually get some very strange, but what have become very predictable, responses. The responses I usually get are either ones of sympathy; “Oh that must have been so hard for you.”, surprise “Really? That’s so interesting!”, or questions; “What was that like?”. The reason I get this response is because I am what has been called an “autism sibling”. I am from a family of six. My two parents, my older sister and myself are considered “neurotypical” while both of my younger brothers are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The older of the two is diagnosed with Autism, as well as OCD and he is also profoundly deaf perhaps due to scar tissue on his brain. My youngest brother is diagnosed with PDD-NOS which stands for Pervasive Development Disorder-Not Otherwise specified which falls under the Autism Spectrum or umbrella if you will. He also has Epilepsy. So there that is.

On top of being an Autism sibling I have my own struggles. I was  diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder as a young adult. Though my diagnosis is recent my struggles with anxiety are not. I have struggled with anxiety induced nausea and stomach aches for as long as I can possibly remember.  Anxiety has also greatly affected my confidence and self esteem and medically it has affected my sleep and my eating habits. These are things that affected me through childhood, adolescence and still to this day. So there is a lot to cover in that area as well of course.

I am now also a mom. Who would have thought this little ball of anxiety could be a parent? Not me but now I could not imagine it being any other way. So you know I have to write about that too and how being an autism sibling and being anxious about everything plays into how I am as a parent. 

Phew! Well I hope now you are interested enough to continue to read my posts, or have questions that I hope I can answer.  At the very least I hope I can  give you some sort of insight into the life of a seemingly average person with a bit of a twist.