Is this your immediate future Todd?


I feel betrayed by my Trump-voting extended family. It goes beyond just the fact that Trump is the worst candidate I can imagine. It’s that I have a son with severe autism. Everything in life is a challenge for him. He is near puberty now, and this flood of confusing emotions just makes everything that much more overwhelming to him. He is regressing in school. He has developed such deep obsessive-compulsive behaviors that they affect every aspect of his day. He can barely communicate verbally, and it’s hard to understand what he’s trying to say even when he does talk as rarely do the string of words make much sense. He can’t communicate how he hurts physically or emotionally.

Anything new scares him to death. He has no sense of his own safety or the dangers around him. He is getting bigger and taller. When he panics, it’s almost impossible to keep hold of him so he doesn’t hurt himself or others. He may run into traffic. He doesn’t mean to harm anyone. Deep down he is kind and even silly. The world is just often a terrifying place for him, and I fear this is only going to get harder for him.

We get basically no assistance from local or state disability services. We’ve been on the Medicaid Waiver wait list for years with no end in sight. Frankly, we are getting rather desperate. We are just exhausted. We feel like we are losing. We feel like we are failing him.

Compounding this is that we have a younger son. He alternates between fiercely loving and protecting his older brother to being completely overwhelmed by a life that to him feels really unfair. He often has to play second fiddle to his brother because he has so many needs. It isn’t fair. We do whatever we can to make him feel special in his own right and spend focused time with him. But sometimes things blow up, and we have to deal with it. He’s had to grow up so fast. He’s had to see things that are pretty scary. I don’t know how someone his age processes his older brother screaming and stomping and banging his head, but it has to be terrifying. We talk about things regularly, but still. It’s so hard.

We get no respite or help. We grab what advice and help we can from professionals, but we can only afford so much of that. We have begged and pleaded. We were told we can only get government assistance for our son right now if we threaten to hurt him.

Trump has threatened to take away all of his education rights.

Trump has threatened to take away what pre-existing condition coverage we currently rely on.

Trump’s plans would destroy any chance of him ever getting a Medicaid Waiver for help now and funding that might let him have independence later.

Trump would leave us and him on our own.

Trump’s plans would destroy his future.

And worst of all, Trump has made it OK to bully and mock my son. Those who support him are saying it’s OK, too. They have created a culture in which kids see it’s OK to bully. And if you’d ever meet my son, he has so many of the outward, stereotypical behaviors of an autistic child. You might as well paint a big bullseye on his back that says “bully me”. He would have no way to defend himself. He wouldn’t even understand what is going on. I am terrified every day for him.

The biggest stab in the back are all the Trump supporters in my family who say they love our son. They know how desperate things are for him and for us. They know what Trump has done. They know what his policies will mean to my son and to our family. They know it endangers his present and his future. And yet, they voted for him anyway.

I feel utterly betrayed.

I never expected them to vote for Hillary. That would have been a bridge too far. But they could have left it blank or written in one of the uncles or something. Anything but this.

For his whole life, they have been about the only lifeline we have. In emergencies, they have helped us many, many times. Honestly, they are the only semblance of a support system we have if things go to pieces.

Our younger son adores them. He knows we like Clinton, so like many kids he likes who his parents like. I’ve talked with him a lot about how government works and how sacred voting is and how so many have sacrificed so that we might have that freedom to vote. We’ve talked about the Constitution and Amendments, suffrage and slavery, and so much of what I want my child to grow up knowing about. I want him to believe in our democracy. I want him to believe it works.

I haven’t told him a thing about why Trump is a cruel, heartless **** because he’s a brilliant kid for his age. He will know the people he loves voted for Trump, the man who mocked his brother and all who have certain challenges, and it will break his heart. But someday he will learn. I can’t keep him from knowing forever. Someday his heart will break. It’s a terrible thing to suddenly learn the people you love aren’t who you thought they were.

No matter what happens tomorrow, my family will be left with broken pieces that we might never be able to put together again. We have always put family before differences - and believe me we’ve had lots of differences - but this is different. This is saying that my son doesn’t deserve respect, that he is a second-class citizen, that he doesn’t deserve a chance at a better future, that my family doesn’t deserve help. I feel like we no longer matter.

Yes, this election has divided America in ways that might take us a long time to recover from. But it has also crushed families in ways we may never recover from. I want to believe there is a way forward. I want to believe there is a way to heal all the wounds that have been inflicted. But right now I can’t.

Right now, I am simply heartbroken.


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