about autism.” Grace’s path was a bit different. Following the diagnosis of her daughter, she originally felt like she finally belonged somewhere. She soon discovered otherwise. What I didn’t realize at that time was that just having the diagnosis doesn’t mean you “belong” anywhere. You need to involve yourself in the community in order to feel a part of it. So, about a year after her diagnosis, I started looking for a support group. I found this Autism Support Group through the Children’s Guild Foundation online, and I started going. I’ve been going ever since. While Crystal and Rachel had both been given information about the support group through other community resources they used, Grace recognized her need to belong to a support group. These different experiences in finding the support group may relate to the experiences each mother had prior to joining the support group. Although Crystal and Rachel both felt somewhat isolated, the feeling of isolation reported by Grace was much higher than that reported by the other two mothers. All three mothers found that the support group provided them with exactly the sort of atmosphere and support they had been looking for. When asked what the most important part of being a part of the support group was, Crystal offered several reasons: “Feeling like you belong,” “Knowing that they stand for the right thing,” “They don’t discriminate. They’re accepting of all people,” and “They don’t turn you away because you’re different.” For Crystal, the idea of inclusion and belonging within the group was extremely important, especially because following her son’s diagnosis she was being kept “out of the loop” by her son’s doctor. She described the support group as “a way to keep me from being isolated…to let me know I wasn’t alone.”
Joining the support group allowed Crystal to seek a better explanation of ASD, which changed her focus from the doctors she believed had wronged her and her son to gaining access to resources and specialists who could help her son in the way Crystal wanted. Crystal says she believes with “the right people working with me, he [her son] could soar.” Crystal’s story turns from a negative focus on what she lacked and how her son’s options had been limited to a positive focus on what she as a mother can do to support her child. For Crystal, the support group gave her the validation she was looking for and made her feel more informed, which in turn made her more confident in making decisions going forward. While Grace’s story is about her struggle to accept herself as a good mother, and Crystal’s story is about overcoming challenges and seeking resources for her son as a heroic mother, Rachel’s narrative bridged the two. Rachel found herself isolated from friends and the mothers of her son’s peers because of her son’s diagnosis. However, she says, “I am lucky that my husband and family ARE supportive” regarding both her son’s needs and her own need for support in being a mother of a child with ASD. Rachel did not offer any suggestion in her interview that she struggled with redefining her sense of motherhood following her son’s diagnosis, but both her feeling of isolation and her feeling that she is lucky to have the support of her husband and family suggest that she faced challenges in accepting what it meant to others for her to be a mother of a child with ASD. In effect, Rachel felt pressure from the outside to redefine her sense of motherhood, even though she was more focused on finding the right specialists and resources for her son. Doing what is right for her son and her family is very much what