Episode Title: Is Change Too Much for Neurodivergent Individuals? The Heartbreaking Reality of Loss & New Beginnings

Episode Number: 27

Release Date: Sept 25, 2024

Duration: 01:03:31

Episode Summary: In this episode of Now You Know One Autistic, hosts Moshe and Leah explore the complex emotions surrounding loss, grief, and significant life changes, particularly from an autistic perspective. Moshe shares his personal experiences with losing his mother and how it impacted him as an autistic individual. The discussion covers the unique challenges neurodivergent individuals face when dealing with major life transitions.

Key Takeaways

  • The Profound Impact of Loss: Losing a loved one can be devastating, especially for autistic individuals who rely on routines and structure. The hosts share their personal experiences with grief, highlighting the unique challenges faced by neurodivergent people in processing and coping with loss.
  • Navigating Change: Change, whether big or small, can be overwhelming for autistic individuals. The hosts discuss the importance of patience, understanding, and maintaining routines when supporting neurodivergent people through transitions.
  • The Power of Support: Having a strong social support network is crucial for anyone experiencing grief or significant life changes. The hosts emphasize the importance of providing love, understanding, and patience to neurodivergent individuals during challenging times.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • The unique challenges faced by autistic individuals in coping with grief and adapting to change
  • Strategies for supporting neurodivergent people during difficult transitions
  • The importance of patience, understanding, and maintaining routines when navigating significant life changes

Quotes

  • "I felt like I was naked almost. I felt like all of my clothes had been removed and I was exposed for the world, and everything hurt, and everything was painful and everything was loud." - Moshe
  • "Your mom was quite an influence. She influenced things that you didn't even know about. She made things work behind the scenes for you that you didn't even really understand or know about." - Leah

Resources & Links

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Transcript

[00:08] Moshe: Hi, I'm Moshe, and I'm autistic.

[00:10] Leah: I'm Leah, and I'm boring. Welcome to the now, you know, one autistic podcast.

[00:16] Moshe: The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect one autistic and one layout and don't necessarily reflect the entire autistic community.

[00:25] Leah: Let's get to it. Hi, Moshe.

[00:32] Moshe: Hi, Leah.

[00:34] Leah: How are you today?

[00:35] Moshe: I'm okay, yeah?

[00:36] Leah: Aw, you don't sound so great.

[00:39] Moshe: Yeah. So today is the yort site of my mother's death.

[00:44] Leah: I think you might have to explain to the listeners what a yort site is.

[00:48] Moshe: So every year on the anniversary of the death of. I mean, really any close relative, but in particular your parents, we're talking first degree relative. First degree relative.

[00:59] Leah: Parent, spouse, child. God forbid, sibling, sibling.

[01:02] Moshe: Yeah, parent, spouse, child, sibling. You observe a period of remembrance that, I mean, after a year, it lasts from sundown to sundown. And you're supposed to take some time to remember the person, and you're supposed to light a candle or candles. And if you're religious, you go to the synagogue or a place of worship. Can you say a special prayer or two for them called Kadesh?

[01:31] Leah: You went to the best place of worship?

[01:33] Moshe: Yes. We happen to live in Jerusalem. So I went to the Kotel or the western wall, and the people there were very kind because you need ten men to say the prayer, and there's always men at the wall. So we got together and we said some word about mom. So we felt that because her, the anniversary of her death was coming up, that we would do this week's show, which, again, is a little bit late. We're really trying to get on a better schedule.

[02:02] Leah: It's right on time. Now, we were very clear that we can't necessarily stick to a Sunday schedule, but it's right on time.

[02:10] Moshe: Right on time. Or if you're listening to this, it's early after the fact. It's as early as you want it to be. But we thought we would do this week's show on loss, grief, and significant changes.

[02:22] Leah: Yeah. So coping with significant change in general.

[02:25] Moshe: Yes.

[02:25] Leah: So, of course, loss and grief is the first topic we're talking about because we are talking about the loss of a loved one. I think maybe everybody over a certain age can identify who's at least lost someone.

[02:37] Moshe: Yeah. Unfortunately, more fortunately, depending on how you view things, you're bound to lose loved ones over time. And as an adult, the older you get, presumably, the older your parents get and your relatives that you knew from when you were little. And if you're fortunate enough to have known grandparents or even great grandparents, then as you get older, you start losing them. And I was 16 when my grandfather died. My mother's father, my father's father died, unfortunately, about a year and a half before I was born, although he is very important to me still, which is why my name is Moshe. And my father's mother, thank goodness, lived many years. And she passed away in 2004, I believe. And my grandfather, my mother's father died in 97, and my mother's mother died in 2000. And my mother died in 2011. In September.

[03:42] Leah: Right. So, I mean, discussing that, I suppose that you would say the toughest loss you've had up until maybe now would be the loss of your mother.

[03:50] Moshe: The loss of my mother was something that I can't really describe. If any of you, whether or not you're autistic, have suffered the loss of a parent, then you know that it's something is different than. I mean, I can't necessarily judge everyone's experience, but it's one of the most significant losses, second only, I suppose, to the loss of a child, God forbid.

[04:17] Leah: That'S not the natural way of things. And we've both been lucky enough to not right. Having lost a child, though we do sympathize and empathize with anybody out there who has.

[04:27] Moshe: It's got to be a terrible experience, whether it was pre birth or post birth or any of those things. It's got to be pretty rough. And of course, I certainly wouldn't want to take away anyone else's pain. And they say that the neurodivergents often lack empathy. And I can honestly say I absolutely don't, because I've known people that have lost relatives that were very close to them and others who have lost parents. Actually, our friend recently lost her father.

[04:55] Leah: Yes, that also brought it up, because it was very close to the anniversary of your mother's passing. And our friend, unfortunately, is back in Canada, so we couldn't be there as much for her as wanted. So we, you know, we facetimed and stuff as much as we could. She was up in the middle of the night, so it worked out, and it was just a whole thing, and it brought up a lot of feelings for you. I, conversely, was lucky enough to not lose somebody close to me until I was about 24. And then my grandfather passed after a very lengthy illness, and it just about destroyed me. I was not prepared for that, but I feel like I dealt with it differently. It burned really bright at the time and for a while afterwards. But knowing the anniversary of his death, it doesn't really affect me so much. Whereas having been with you now for a while, I can see that, especially the anniversary of your mom's death, all the anniversaries. But the anniversary of your mom's death has still a really significant effect on you, and this is many, many years later. So can you explain a little bit about how you were affected at the beginning when you lost her versus now, and why you think you still have such a hard time around the anniversary of her passing?

[06:02] Moshe: Well, the relationship that I had with my mother growing up right up until the end, was, we'll say, complicated, to say the least. I was. My sister and I were raised by a single mother. That's how we met, actually. You and I?

[06:17] Leah: Yeah.

[06:18] Moshe: But my parents were divorced when I was four, and I didn't see my father very much until I was about ten. I would see him for a few weeks every few years because he was, you know, doing other things or he was going through, you know, training to be a police officer. And he was sort of living his own life. And, you know, thank goodness he's still alive and we're reasonably healthy today. And I and I have an okay relationship with him now. But I was basically raised by my mother, and she formed the basis of a great deal of my childhood.

[06:52] Leah: And mine too. Yes. Yesterday, one of our relatives who didn't know Hamilton I met asked me because she knew it was her anniversary and asked me if I knew her, and it sort of made me laugh. I said, of course I knew her. She was like my mother. I adored her. So that was kind of a nice opportunity for me to share my feelings about her to somebody who didn't know, apparently, even though they're sort of related to us, kind of.

[07:13] Moshe: Yeah, she was. She was a big influence on your life and on my life and on my sister's life. And I was. I was a very troubled child, probably because I was an undiagnosed autistic. So I had a lot of behavioral issues and a lot of emotional problems. And I was struggling a great deal with the prospect of growing up and seeing all of my friends sort of going forward in their lives and being very frustrated with my lack of growth and development. And she was a wonderful woman, and she did the absolute best that she could. But at times she was not as patient with me as maybe she should have been.

[07:53] Leah: Each of our mothers had their strengths and their drawbacks, which is very difficult when they're your only parent that's responsible for you, which we both experience. No offense to my father and all, he's a lovely man, but he would probably admit himself that he wasn't really present. So when they have strengths, they're great strengths for you, but when they have drawbacks you don't have anything to fall back on when you've got one parent and your mom was very well financially equipped to deal with you but not well, emotionally equipped to deal with you. And my mom was actually the opposite. She had no finances whatsoever but emotionally she was very much there.

[08:26] Moshe: There wasn't any diagnosis for autism as much back then. I mean, it existed, but it didn't exist in the form that I presented. So I was sort of one way and the other. I struggled in school, I was very smart, but of course attention wasn't there. I struggled socially, I struggled at home.

[08:45] Leah: You're still like that, though. You will do really well in things that interest you. But if something doesn't interest you, it doesn't even reach the radar. So you can be as smart as you want, but it's not sort of go in and being done or processed at all.

[08:56] Moshe: Yeah. And she, I guess, was as patient about that as she could have been. I mean, she had a lot else going on and of course my sister was there too and I was, I mean, I wouldn't say that I was very high needs but I definitely required a lot more attention than she had time for or at least was willing to give at that time. And I fell back on, on you and on your mom and some other people. My grandparents as well were sort of there as well. But when I was 17, I moved out effectively and my mother and I had had a rocky relationship at that point and I made some difficult choices. And again, being a troubled kid as I was, we weren't as close as I maybe wanted to be. And after that we sort of saw each other as much as we could. But I was pursuing a relationship with my father more at that point and she moved to Montreal and she moved to Ottawa with our sister and I would speak to her on the phone all the time and I would see her on occasion. But starting around 2000 especially, I didn't see her very much. I would speak to her often but I didn't see her very much. And I was sort of trying to pursue what I, what I thought was my own path and it didn't really amount to much because I didn't have a lot of guidance. So I made continued bad choices and nobody really understood that. A lot of this was sort of a cry for help. And I needed someone to sort of shake me and say, no, no, no, this is not what you need to do. This is what you need to do. So I continued to flounder, I guess. And when I was back in Montreal for a while after the birth of my oldest, you know, we were there and she was there.

[10:51] Leah: She tried, she really tried. And I think, so did you. But there were other things sort of in the way of happening.

[10:57] Moshe: And I would see her on occasion, we would talk on the phone a lot, but I would see her very rarely as I sort of bounced back and forth between the west and the east coast of Canada. She became sick. She started being sick in the mid two thousands. I think she got.

[11:14] Leah: I remember her mentioning to me that she didn't feel quite right, but I thought that she was sort of being paranoid. This was like 2006.

[11:21] Moshe: Yeah. She got the cancer diagnosis in like 2007, 2007. And she came out to see me and my first wife and our daughter a couple of times and she continued to get sicker. And then she just didn't come out because it was hard and it was hard to travel and things like that. And then we went out to say goodbye to her in the summer of 2011 and we went out to Ottawa and we had fun. The cousins played and I got to spend some time with mom and say my goodbyes. And she went into hospice soon after we left Ottawa and she died the end of September 20. Eleven. And at the time I was working, I was trying to be a, I mean, it's known by a bunch of different terms, nurse is a continuing care assistant, home support worker, personal support worker, whatever you want to call it. Basically, the people that work in like nursing homes and home care that help the disabled or the elderly with things, tidy them up, get them dressed, make their meals, clean their house, things like that seemed like something I would be good at. And it gave me a lot of perspective while I was going through the program and I was actually on my, I was on one of the first or second days of my home care practicum when I got the call that my mother had died. And it was expected. I'd spoken to her on the phone a couple of days earlier and she was quite ill. And I said what I wanted to say because I didn't think I would have any more opportunities. And it turned out I didn't. That was the last time I spoke to her at all. And when I first heard that my mother died, my first thought was that I wanted to just move on. And change the subject. And the nurse that I was working with at the time asked me if I wanted to go home, and I said no. Then she told me to go home, so I did.

[13:21] Leah: I mean, that's a classic example of just not, like, the information just doesn't settle right away.

[13:26] Moshe: And she had been such a presence in my life, whether or not she was physically there, that when she ceased to be there, I. I kind of lost. I lost my. My security. I felt like a lot of people.

[13:39] Leah: Describe losing a parent that way.

[13:41] Moshe: I felt like I was naked almost. I felt like all of my clothes had been removed and I was exposed for the world, and everything hurt, and everything was painful and everything was loud. And I unfortunately didn't have the social support network that I wish I would have had at that time. And I really. I didn't really know what to do with myself. I tried. I can't really describe how my experience would be different or the same for people who are autistic versus people who are not. But for me, who requires a routine and a structure, it was very challenging for me because my mother, it turned out, even though I was now in, gosh, my twenties, almost 30, I was an adult, for all intents and purposes, at least. And it turned out that even though I didn't see my mother much and I didn't talk to her every day and she didn't have, like, have a regular presence in my life, it turned out she did, because it was kind of like when you are listening to a song and the record skips at the same time every time.

[14:54] Leah: Your mom was quite an influence. She influenced things that you didn't even know about. She made things work behind the scenes for you that you didn't even really understand or know about. She was quite. She was an influential person. She could run the world from her bed. And I'm sure that you felt the loss of that when that was no longer the case.

[15:14] Moshe: It was a series of missing pieces, because, I mean, she didn't live with us. She didn't even live in the same city. She didn't even live on the same side of the country.

[15:21] Leah: Didn't matter because she had a phone. She would call your wife or she would call me, or she would call my mom, or she would call your sister, or she would make stuff happen for you. And I don't know that you even knew that was going on.

[15:31] Moshe: And I would have these moments where I would catch myself and I would say to myself, oh, I should call mom. Oh, no, I can't or, oh, I should tell mom. Oh, no, I can't. And events started to happen, and she wasn't there. My birthday came in January, and she didn't call me, and her birthday came.

[15:53] Leah: All those firsts are really February.

[15:55] Moshe: I didn't call her. She just wasn't there anymore.

[15:58] Leah: So, I mean, that story actually hit all the themes we want to talk about today, which was lost grief, and because you're talking a lot about, like, significant changes that you had in your life. But in terms of that, I think maybe everybody gets the picture that it was pretty devastating for you at the time. And I know that you miss her every day, but you don't always react in a certain way every day. But around the time of her Yurtzeit or the anniversary of her death, you definitely have a mood shift. You can see it. So is it just as hard now for you around the anniversary of her death? Is it different? And why do you think that is?

[16:32] Moshe: I think for. For someone like me, who is so stuck in routines and patterns and, I mean, for lack of a better word, traditions, having a repeated tradition, a repeated pattern happening, it's a. It's a sense of loss, but it's also a sense of a shift, because my daily routine is kind of down to, you know, item by item by item. But then around this time of year, I end up feeling very sad and very mournful, and it's a reminder of the loss that I still feel. But from a very clinical, scientific, cold perspective, it is a shift in my routine. It is. I'm a little bit slower to do things. I'm a little bit more forlorn. I don't smile as much. I'm not as happy. And my mind or my body knows that that's different than my usual routine. So, in effect, I'm sad because I'm mourning her loss, but I'm also out of sorts because my routine has been shifted.

[17:41] Leah: I think that the majority of people, or at least for me, it works that way, is that it's really, really hard at the beginning, but then you mourn and you move on. Like, I don't feel the same grief that I felt when he passed away as I do on the anniversary of his passing, which is Yom Kippur, which is a huge holiday for us, meaning, to me, anyway, that emotionally, mentally, whichever way that I process through it. In a way, do you think that processing delay may have affected your ability to deal with this grief?

[18:13] Moshe: Absolutely. Because, I mean, I've been told at least everyone has a process of mourning and the process of working through grief, and everyone does it in a different way. And for me, at the time of her passing, I was dealing with mourning her loss, with the change in my routine, with a lack of self identification, because I had defined myself for good or bad, according to her, for my whole life. And now I was sort of faced with a lot of metaphysical questions, like, who am I? And who am I to exist in a world where she is not there to influence me in some way? How do I define myself if she's not there there to help me define myself? And on the anniversary of her death, I'm reminded of the lack of presence that I had then, and I don't so much have now. I mean, it's been 13 years, so I've lived a lot of life, some would say too much life, but I've lived a lot of life between then and now. I've done a lot of things. I've really kind of pulled myself up by the bootstraps and really made something good of myself. And I feel like I don't necessarily need her anymore to define me or tell me what to do or raise me. I'm a parent myself. I don't necessarily need a parent to parent me. But at the same time, it's a reminder of the lack of structure that I do have lacking a parent in my life.

[19:45] Leah: So, I mean, also, let's talk about social support at the time. So during the loss of my ex, Annie's father, everybody's met Annie. If you've listened to all the episodes.

[19:55] Moshe: On the post about LGBTQ intersectionality between neurodiversity, we had a really good talk, a lot of fun. You should go back and listen to it.

[20:04] Leah: Her father did not want a shiva. So a Shiva is a ritual period of mourning that jewish people go through where the person who's mourning essentially just sits at home, and everybody takes care of them for a while, up to seven days. It usually doesn't last seven days because there's a holiday in between somewhere, and you're not allowed to mourn during certain holidays. And when I said to the rabbi that, the rabbi said, so what if he didn't want it? It's not for him. It's for you. It's for you to be able to go through the grieving process. So if you want to do one, do it. So we did. It turns out the reason he didn't want one was because he had some family politics going on, and he didn't want us to have to bother with certain parts of his family, but it was fine. We just, you know, again, the same rabbi, he had our back. He didn't announce anything. He just did it, you know, sort of quietly. So social support. Yes. It's, again, baked into our religion. So many great things are baked into our religion, really, where everybody and your family and your friends and people who knew them and their relatives come to your home, bring you food, make you a plate, sit with you, talk to you, and just sort of allow you to rest and go through the grieving process. So you lacked any of that, obviously, during that time, and that has a huge effect on one's ability to process through grief.

[21:18] Moshe: Yeah, it was a challenge because my mother didn't have a funeral and she didn't have a shiva, and she told me when we went out to say goodbye to her, when I die, I just want to be forgotten. I don't want anyone to think about me or worry about me or consider me. I just want to. I want everyone else to move on and pretend that I never was. And I realize now, years and years later, how selfish that was.

[21:45] Leah: I think, in her way, she was trying to protect everyone.

[21:47] Moshe: Absolutely. She was. She was doing the thing that she always did in life. Don't worry about me. You worry about yourself. You're fine. She was very. She was very selfless that way.

[21:57] Leah: Very jewish mother that way.

[21:59] Moshe: Very jewish mother. And she was very, oh, don't worry about me. I'm going to be dead. So you. You just move on with your life. You don't think too much about me, and I'll be, you know, fine wherever I end up. And that was her thing, but it never really allowed me the chance to process what I was going through because I didn't have those, as you say, baked in ceremonies where I was forced to mourn. For me, life legitimately did move on. I had to go back, I don't think I went back to work the next day, but I definitely went back to work the day after. And I had a lot of people because I was still in. In school, and, I mean, a lot of people hugged me and asked me if I need anything. And there was a counselor in the school who I would meet with every day for a few weeks, and we would talk and she would have me journal my feelings and write letters to my mother.

[22:50] Leah: How significant were those people to you? How many of them do you still talk to? It's really important that your social network is comprised of people who are meaningful.

[22:58] Moshe: Yeah, I didn't have anyone like that, I unfortunately pushed a lot of people away, and the people that I did have in my life were not as inclined to be there for me the way that I needed them to. Unfortunately, a lot of people in my life at that time made it about themselves, and nobody really spent a whole lot of time, at least from my perspective, worrying about how I felt or what I was going through or what I wanted.

[23:23] Leah: So since this is a podcast about Moshe and Leia, I just want to touch a little bit on a couple of things, I guess, that were going on through that time because everybody would rightly say, well, you know, she was your mom and she was like my mom, what was the issue? Why wasnt I there to support you? And every year, again, we get a reminder on Facebook thats actually kind of tragic. Do you want to talk about that?

[23:46] Moshe: Right. So I remembered, I thought about you. I remembered you all the time when we werent together and when my mother died, one of the first things that I thought about was how it might have affected you. And I was very sad because at the time, my wife at the time made a big show about how you didn't contact me and you didn't care and you didn't like me and you didn't want to be a part of my life. But I needn't worry because she had contacted you and you had told her that you didn't want to talk to me, but that it was okay, like, you were informed and that it was important to note that how much could you really care about me if you didn't even call me when my mother died, right? And it was, it added an extra layer of sadness for me.

[24:37] Leah: So right after the post on Facebook about your mother passing. So maybe a day after is a memory on Facebook that comes up every year that I think we keep for a reason because, I mean, it could easily be deleted, but I don't want to because it's a good reminder of, you know, not letting people necessarily influence you. Where you wrote, you know, you were waiting for a call from a certain somebody and it never came. And that made you very sad, but you understood why. And two things always strike me every year about that post. First is, I didn't even see it. No, sorry. The first is, even if I did see it, I would have no idea that it was about me. That's how horribly lacking our communication was at that time. And I didn't even see it.

[25:17] Moshe: Yeah, it was an interesting series of misses for me. I definitely should have known better to reach out but I didn't have the communication skills that I do now as I am recording a podcasting episode. And if it was that important to me, I definitely should have reached out on my own. And the crux of it was when my wife at the time had told me that I didn't need to reach out to you, I should have known better myself and not allowed her to play to my fears.

[25:48] Leah: I mean, the reality is she is the one who informed me, I guess, to sort of get ahead of the whole situation because she knew if you contacted me or your sister contacted me, then I would be like, get involved and then I would be present and then it would be a problem for her. But anyway, dialing back from that, everybody makes mistakes in their lives. It's just one of those sad and communication things that definitely people should be working on. Because if you had had more support, aka, you know, at the risk of me sounding full of myself, my support, you would have done much better.

[26:20] Moshe: No, absolutely. I would have handled it a lot better. I would have worked through it a lot better. And as it stood, I basically had to work through it on my own. I didn't have the support that I needed to work through it with anybody who I felt at the time cared enough to help me with it. So I had to process it every year or every day, every week, every month, every year on my own. And over time, you know, it gets a little easier.

[26:44] Leah: So for the last few years, we have been privileged enough to sort of process it together because I didn't really process much about her death either. I moved on. So she passed in September 20. Eleven and two months later I was pregnant with my first child. So I didn't have much time or whatever to process. So we do go through that yearly together and we do try to do the rituals as much as possible. So we're working on it.

[27:07] Moshe: Yes. And what it brought to mind now that we're doing this amazing podcast is how does the idea of mourning and grief and significant changes, whether it's something big like a death or the loss of a relationship, or even the loss of your house, not to say that your house gets blown away in a tornado or whatever, but like, you know, moving, moving is a big change. How do those changes get processed by autistics and other neurodiverse people?

[27:40] Leah: So essentially, what's the difference in terms of a neurotypical person and a neurodivergent person when they're processing things like loss? So we've discussed a lot of loss already, and we can touch on it a little bit more if it becomes pertinent. But now I'd like to talk about change, just change in general, because change for our family is hard. Let's discuss the move we just made. I was fine. I thrive in chaos. Chaos is my thing, so I do very well when I'm put under pressure. If I'm too relaxed, generally things start to LAX and they don't get done. Raya was fine because she's always fine. She's like a Chia kid. I keep saying that because she sort of self raises herself. But you and Avram, though, just the change of moving here, and you change jobs at the same time. That took a while to process, didn't it?

[28:23] Moshe: It did. It was a great change to the.

[28:26] Leah: Point where your body actually rebels. You got physically sick on top of everything.

[28:30] Moshe: I did. My defenses were down, my masks were down. I was. I was significantly challenged.

[28:36] Leah: You're like the Enterprise with all your shields down or something?

[28:40] Moshe: Something like that. And it was actually a really, really beneficial change. Unlike in past occasions where we were, like, going away from something, we actually went towards something. We found this amazing place and we. It's a nicer area. There's more services, and there's a sunroom that's cheaper. It's cheaper. It's a lot more affordable for us and starting a really great job. There's less, and there's less instability and everything is looking up. But it was still a new environment, a new bed to wake up in, a new, you know, series of walls to look at, new streets, new buses to catch. You know, everything is not quite right, for good or for bad. The place that we previously lived in was a place that we've been in since we. We came here.

[29:28] Leah: And it was for bad, for the record, for bad.

[29:30] Moshe: Yes, it was a terrible, terrible place. But it was still a place that I was used to. And now this was a new place. And it caused a lot of chaos for my mind because I didn't know where anything was. And things were very unfamiliar and the place just didn't feel. Lived in. It smelled different, it looked different. It didn't have our mark on it. Like it wasn't ours yet. It was a place that we now lived in, but it wasn't like ours. And until that ship was righted, I just felt very out of sort. And I was sick and I was anxious and I was. Things were just not quite right that we didn't have the knife that I needed and we didn't have the.

[30:15] Leah: Oh, I've forgotten about that. Yeah.

[30:17] Moshe: We didn't have all of the tchotchkes.

[30:21] Leah: There are four trips back to the old apartment to pick up things you had forgotten because you needed just little things.

[30:26] Moshe: I needed to have the things that were familiar. I need, you know, this is the knife that I used for Shabbat. This is, you know, the utensils that I had. This is the glass that I use to. These are our mugs, like, things that belong to me so that I could look at them and go, this place is mine. This place belongs to me. And even though it's not as familiar as the other place was, and hopefully it will be in time, it is still mine because I could look around and see pieces of me there. And it took some time, and it took time for Avram, too, to get used to his new surroundings.

[31:00] Leah: Yeah. So I guess we can discuss, really, for the listeners what is a good way to sort of without keeping everything status quo always, because it's not always possible. Or keeping somebody in the same house, same job, same apartment, same friends, same everything, same food, same same same help a neurodivergent work through changes like that. Because for me, again, thrived in chaos. Now I'm exhausted, but I think it's just like, oh, everything's done.

[31:26] Moshe: I think if we could change any aspect of it, it would have been better to have a more gradual transition. Instead of, like those midnight runs back to the old apartment, you know, running out with a sack full of, you know, miscellaneous stealing stuff, like, you know, a thief in the night. Just to move over over the course of several days.

[31:49] Leah: We tried to do that, but it didn't work out that way.

[31:51] Moshe: It didn't work and just kind of getting used to it. And I know that when you are moving from one place to another with children, they recommend, for example, that you have the child bring with them certain things that they really like. What do you have? You make up the bed exactly the way it was. You orient the room exactly as it was. It's a much easier transition than to be in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar surroundings and an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliarity.

[32:21] Leah: Because both you and Abram have. You both have things that go off when there's big changes. For him, it's sleep. So his mood could be great. He could seem really happy, which he was. He was thrilled with his new room and everything. But he doesn't sleep for a month when we make a big change.

[32:36] Moshe: Yeah.

[32:36] Leah: And then that, of course, gradually leads to poor mood, poor performance, you know, safety and security.

[32:41] Moshe: Is important for him. He needs to.

[32:44] Leah: For you, it's a mood thing. Your mood shifts drastically. You're. You're short, you're shorter tempered. You're in a bad mood, and then you get physically ill. Actually, if the changes are significant enough for you, not physically ill, like, working your way into, like, a vomiting frenzy or anything, like, literally, your brain will tell your body, your defenses are totally down, you're getting sick now, and you'll get, like, a deathly illness.

[33:07] Moshe: Yes. And I struggled for a good few weeks the first month that we were here with physical issues and, you know, sicknesses, and I couldn't move my neck for weeks and weeks, and it was just excruciating pain. And then I had that terrible food poisoning where I was physically ill, unrelated to the move, and more related to bad milk. But it was.

[33:28] Leah: It was bad milk.

[33:30] Moshe: Like, it was like that. That milk had gone all the way over to the dark side.

[33:35] Leah: Yeah. That milk was like picking your daughter up for a date on a motorcycle bed.

[33:39] Moshe: Yeah, it was bad news. It was the kind of milk that you don't bring home to meet the parents of. And I got over the worst of it, and I'm actually doing really good now. And, of course, the place is very familiar to me. I have the books that I like. I have, you know, all the picture. I have a few pictures on the wall that I like. I can look around and see my stuff. I know where the cutlery is, where the plates are, and I know how the oven works. Sort of, kind of, almost, maybe, possibly. I have my little, like, corner set up for work, which I've done.

[34:11] Leah: You found the cupboard. Do you remember?

[34:13] Moshe: I found the cupboard.

[34:14] Leah: It took moshe a month to realize that there was a cupboard with more food in the back.

[34:17] Moshe: I found the pantry. There was like a. Yeah, the pantry.

[34:21] Leah: Sorry.

[34:21] Moshe: The kitchen continued into the back room where there was additional food present.

[34:25] Leah: He said, the tiles end here. So the kitchen ends here. I said, no, no, honey, there's. Because he asked me for. You asked me for peanut butter, right? And I said, there's a whole thing. He said, where? I said, in the. In the pantry. He said, we have a pantry. I said, yes, there's so much food here.

[34:39] Moshe: And, I mean, we made an agreement that over time, we would slowly start to transition to more stuff that belonged to us. Take some of the pictures off the wall and put up our own pictures, add some of our own little touches. We're getting a water dispensation system.

[34:56] Leah: Very exciting.

[34:57] Moshe: So that we can actually have proper water here. The water in Israel is actually very drinkable, but a lot of the time it's quite hard.

[35:05] Leah: It's very hard water also. Tell them, tell them, tell them the model we got. You're so excited.

[35:09] Moshe: So we got. So I work in. I work in a place. I mean, I work at home, but my office is in a place called RBS or Ramat Beit Shemesh, which basically means the settlement of Beit Shemesh. And in the office there, they have a water dispensation system, a seltzer attachment, so that you can get hot water, cold water and carbonated water. And I just thought that was the coolest thing. I went into the break room every chance I got, and I got just a glass of soda water just for the sheer luxury that I could have bubbly water anytime I wanted. So I told Leah, I said, because we were going to get our own water dispensation system, because the hard water is hard for us. And it's a very challenging situation.

[35:56] Leah: Not only that, for excitement factor. First of all, the major jewish holidays are coming up, and of course, that means my mom is coming to stay with us, and we don't want our israeli water to, like, murder her, because canadian water is very fresh.

[36:12] Moshe: Yes. So Israel is a really innovative country, despite what they might say in the west. And one of the things that they had to kind of get a handle on very quickly is water recycling, because unless you happen to live close to the Mediterranean or up north, there's a lake, we call it Kinneret. I don't actually remember what the english name of it is. The sea of Galilee.

[36:36] Leah: Oh, is it then?

[36:37] Moshe: Is it? I don't know.

[36:38] Leah: Galilee. And the.

[36:40] Moshe: Anyway, it's a lake of the canary. Is it called the canary?

[36:42] Leah: I think so.

[36:43] Moshe: I don't know. It has a name in English. I forget what it's called. Anyway, so it's a lake of freshwater up there, sort of, I think. And then, of course, the Mediterranean is salinate. It's like an ocean. It is an ocean.

[36:55] Leah: It's almost an ocean or whatever.

[36:56] Moshe: It's kind of an ocean. It's a sea. I don't know the difference between ocean and sea.

[37:00] Leah: I think sea is closed in. I think ocean is open. It's an ocean.

[37:03] Moshe: It's an ocean of sorts. And then if you go all the way down to the south of Israel, there's the Red Sea, which we share with, of course, Egypt. And the majority of the water, of course, there's the dead Sea, which hardly counts as a body of water, because it's mostly just a, it's a puddle. It's a puddle of some sort. And we shared the Dead Sea, of course, with the kingdom of Jordan. Anyway, enough geography, so Israel doesn't have a lot of water. And in most of Israel, you're in the desert. And in Jerusalem in particular, where we live, you're right smack in the middle of the country, surrounded on all sides by desert. So the question is, where is the water coming from? So they got really good at water recycling and they got really good at desalinization because, of course, most of the water that we have here is salted. So when we get the water, we have to do what we can to take at least enough minerals out that we won't die if we drink it. And so it's drinkable water, like you can turn the tap on and drink the water. We do it all the time, but it's very minerally and it's very hard. And if you like shampoo doesn't really soap up. No, no, no. There is no lathere. You might as well, because you're basically washing your hair with sand almost. And I mean, it's fine. Like, it's not poisonous or anything, but it's not ideal. It's not ideal. So if you, if you go into, if you, if you go into people's houses in Israel, almost everyone in Israel has some kind of a water purification dispenser. Dispenser, a filter of some kind. Water filtration systems in Israel are very cheap and because you basically need them, and they take a lot of the minerals out of the water and they clean up some of the bacteria. It's by no stretch like Mexico or anything, but it's very, it takes some getting used to. And if you come to Israel for a vacation, you don't plan on staying and acclimatizing yourself to the environment here, which takes about a year. The water is going to hurt you, the air is going to hurt you, the germs are going to hurt you, you're going to get very sick, but then you get better and you're like immune to everything. But for your mom, who, thank goodness, is recovering from cancer, we didn't want to expose her to our mineral water. Now, when we say mineral water, we.

[39:20] Leah: Don'T mean the, not the fancy french.

[39:22] Moshe: Not the french stuff that you get from, like Evian in the Alps. This is water with like sand and rocks and dripdeh. So it's, it's, it's hard water when you hear hard water in, in North America, you think, oh, this, this water is really hard. No, we have hard water. If North America has hard water, our water is solid. It is. It is. It is a physical math you could actually like. You don't even need.

[39:48] Leah: It. Broke our kettle.

[39:49] Moshe: It did break our kettle. We had a hot water. We had a kettle for, for coffee and tea, and we would fill it up and boil water. So we always had hot running water. And the water, the water was so minerally that it formed a deposit on the bottom and sides and broke the element of the kettle so that when we turned on the boiler, the element just kind of exploded one day because it had such a layer of grit on it that it just could not.

[40:20] Leah: It becomes like a solid mass.

[40:22] Moshe: It couldn't even.

[40:23] Leah: Yeah, it looks like an oyster shell. Anyway, we're off on a tangent now, but that is an example of one of the things that Moshe is doing to make himself comfortable in his new environment.

[40:32] Moshe: Right. So we're getting water that's much more purified and drinkable. It's one of the things that we are doing. But I'm.

[40:38] Leah: He got himself a seltzer maker, you know, just to, and in sort of.

[40:44] Moshe: A long, circuitous way. The answer to your question is what you can do is to do as much as you can, within reason, to give your autistic some of the comfort of the routines that they're used to.

[40:57] Leah: Yes, but I want to clarify this, especially for the parents. That doesn't mean giving into everything, does it?

[41:02] Moshe: No, it doesn't mean giving it to anything.

[41:04] Leah: Eventually, we looked at Avram and we said, here, take some sleeping pills. You're going to fix your sleep routine. Yes, we give him a little bit, but, you know, and I mean, it.

[41:12] Moshe: Was very difficult for him to get used to, you know, the different way of life here in Israel. But I mean, at some point, you're going to have to wake up and realize that this isn't Canada anymore, this is Israel. And things are done a little bit different here. And so you can't do everything, whether it's a new place or a new country. He's getting there and he is finding his way ABRAms I mean, for an autistic, he's actually very resilient compared to a lot of other autistics because he.

[41:36] Leah: Was never allowed to not be.

[41:38] Moshe: Yes.

[41:39] Leah: I never allowed him to, you know, delve so deeply into his rigidity. I didn't find it beneficial.

[41:44] Moshe: So, I mean, on the topic, I guess, of routines when we're talking about getting used to things, it's. It's very calming, I guess, to allow yourself to have even a small bubble of comfort when you're making a big transition. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes it's not possible. If you're talking about the death of a loved one, then obviously you can't sort of have.

[42:08] Leah: They're going to be comforting.

[42:09] Moshe: You can't sort of have them come back for, like, 1 hour a day just to kind of get you used to the idea that they're not here. If you're talking about the end of a major relationship, like a divorce, both you and I have had a marriage breakup. I wouldn't even want the person to be around part time. So I get used to the idea of not having them around without delving too much into it because I'm nearly certain that they listen to this.

[42:31] Leah: Oh, we're already going to hear about this episode, believe you me.

[42:34] Moshe: Yes. And to them, I just want to say, get over it. Get over it. And so when you're talking about a routine. But it was hard. Like, honestly, since I brought it up, my first marriage was one that I would never wish on my worst enemy. But at the same time, not having that consistency was difficult for me. And I struggled to get used to the idea that I was now alone a lot of the time. And so it was a period of a lot of transition for me. And while other people, particularly neurotypicals, might transition into another relationship or get used to the idea of being alone or take some time, I was very much trying to fill holes in my life and be like, well, I don't have this, so now I need that. And I don't have this, so I need that. So I got animals and I got dogs and I got different things. Friends. I got video games. I had different things in my life that I used to fill the time that was now open because of the end of a major relationship, even one that I didn't particularly like. So it was. It was difficult for me, and it's difficult for me whenever something changes, especially significant changes, because when you build your routine and then your routine is lost, your brain goes into panic mode. Like, Avram's teacher accidentally took his phone home last night.

[43:55] Leah: He was very upset. But you know what? I did a thing originally, my feeling was to tell him, you know, he was being spoiled, and don't be mean, because his teacher's son got sick in the middle of the day, and she forgot his phone in her purse. So it absolutely wasn't her fault. And I felt at first, like saying, don't be upset. But then I said, you know what? He trusted her with the phone. He has a right to be upset. So I told him, it's okay to be upset, but it's still not her fault. And that worked a lot better. But his routine was totally off. He was insufferable last night.

[44:24] Moshe: He was insufferable and very bored last night. Yeah. So routines are. Are very important to neurodiverse people. And I can't say enough how important it is that when there is a significant change, that patience is important, because there is going to be fallout. It could be major, it could be minor. If it's inevitable and there's nothing you can do about it, then just kind of hold on tight and wait for it to be over, and it will, eventually. But if there's any way that you can make things easier, then it behooves you. Here's your word for the day.

[44:58] Leah: Behoove.

[44:59] Moshe: It behooves you to at least make it manageable, like good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. I was very. I was very. I want to say I was lucky. I hate using that word in this context, but I was very lucky that every important person or thing that died in my life died a slow death. I know it sounds really bad to say it that way, but, like, when you have someone that you care about, be it a person or a pet, and they just get hit by a car, which, unfortunately, did happen to me. I didn't get hit by a car. I mean, I did get hit by a car, but that's not what I'm talking about. That's a different story that we can talk about some other time. You know, all of my relatives. My mother died of cancer. My grandparents died of cancer. My mother. My mother. My father's mother died of. I'm gonna say cancer. I guess my. My first favorite dog died of cancer. Cancer runs in my family, whether or not you're a person, I guess, sure enough. But it was. It was easy for me to come to terms, because you could see the transition from sick to dying to death. And I can't say that it made it easier, because it certainly didn't. No, but at least you knew it was expected. I had a dog a few years ago named Maya that got hit by a truck, and that was actually my first experience with a sudden death, and I actually completely fell apart. My mind did not know how to process it, and I went into, essentially, a week long meltdown that ended with me getting another dog.

[46:32] Leah: Right.

[46:32] Moshe: Because I didn't know how to handle the sudden loss of something that was so important to me. And, I mean, he was a good dog. He was a perfectly fine dog. He was untrained and out of control, but he was very sweet.

[46:47] Leah: Oh, you mean the dog that you got to replace?

[46:49] Moshe: Yes.

[46:50] Leah: Yeah, he was a very sweet dog, but he was not for you.

[46:53] Moshe: He was not for me. And the lesson for me was that when you have the sudden loss of a routine that you don't have any time to prepare for, I don't, unfortunately, have any advice, because my only experience with that I did not handle well at all. And I think the lack of support once again in my life contributed to the fact that I tried to immediately fill the hole that loss left in my life by getting another dog.

[47:23] Leah: What most people would say is that you have to sit back, realize what happened, take your responsibility for what happened, and then decide if you should even have another dog. But that is a lot of processing for somebody to do on their own.

[47:36] Moshe: Yes. And I was fully on my own, and I certainly don't want to put any of the blame on the dog. His name was Kevin, and his name is Kevin.

[47:45] Leah: He's alive and well. He just doesn't live with us.

[47:47] Moshe: And he was a very sweet dog. And I actually miss him a great deal even now still, because he was such an important part of my life at a very difficult part in my life. But I was absolutely unprepared to have him, and I recognize that, and I acknowledge that. And I guess my only advice in that sense is that if you happen to have someone neurodiverse or autistic, and they do have a sudden loss, and their brain goes into, like, panic mode, the best way to handle that is to not do what I did.

[48:17] Leah: Right. You have to explain to them, even though their brain is reeling out of control, that replacing the exact thing that you've lost is not necessarily the right thing to do. You have to figure out what went wrong, why it happened. Should you have had that one in the first place? Should you have another one? The answer was absolutely not. But it's because Kevin was a really good boy, but he didn't get the care he needed in your, like, small apartment with your working full time and single dad, you know, lifestyle, pretty much.

[48:44] Moshe: And, I mean, we did a really good episode on Pets. And, I mean, pets are wonderful. They really are, whether you're neurodiverse or not, you know, a mouse or a gerbil or a rat or a hamster, right up to, like, I don't know, a horse or something. Pets have great depressants in our life and they, and they form great companions and they have.

[49:03] Leah: Avraham started dog therapy at school.

[49:05] Moshe: Yeah.

[49:05] Leah: And he told me, actually, he's made progress. He told me yesterday that one of the dogs ran out of the room and everyone else in the room panicked because neurodivergent kids apparently panicked when dogs ran away. This is a thing. And he was fine with it, I think. And he helped them and he told them not to panic.

[49:22] Moshe: Yeah. Dogs are great. They really are. And therapy dogs play a really good role in, particularly amongst neurodiverse children. But, I mean, any pet is a responsibility, whether it's a mouse or whether it's a horse. Like, you can't just buy an animal to fill a hole. You have to be willing to put in the work. Therapy dogs or dogs that are there for the ability to provide therapy to children, including neurodiverse children are very well trained.

[49:50] Leah: Even then. They have to be cared for at some point.

[49:52] Moshe: When the dog's nothing like working, you have to walk it and you have to feed it, you have to take care of it, you have to provide for it. If it gets sick, you have to take it to the vet. It's like a living thing. And you can't just fill one need with another need when you can't fill your own need. And it's very important to recognize that the best dog in the world is still going to need to be fed and walked and taken care of. And even small animals like gerbils and mice need to have their cage cleaned and fed and to be handled.

[50:23] Leah: We touched on something real quick, and I want to bring it up at the risk of it being very emotional. My mom. So my mom, as you mentioned, has survived quite a battle with cancer. She fought cancer for a good year.

[50:36] Moshe: We thought we were going to lose her.

[50:37] Leah: We really did. And I want to discuss how that affected you because you didn't really have the opportunity to be there for your mom, but you did have the opportunity to be there for my mom. And first of all, how did that affect you, you being able to sort of be the hero and be there? And also, how did it affect you when, unfortunately, your mom passed and my mom survived? We love her. We're not trying to use her as, like, just an example. We know she's a person, but it's, it's an interesting dynamic.

[51:02] Moshe: It really is. And for me, it was an emotional roller coaster. I had an opportunity. I wasn't able to be there for my mother at the end, unfortunately. And when we went to Montreal because mom got sick. Your mom got sick?

[51:17] Leah: Yeah. We call each other's mom, so sometimes we'll have to be, like, specific with them.

[51:21] Moshe: When your mom got sick, who we're talking about, I had an opportunity. I had an opportunity to, I mean, maybe not fix a mistake in the past that I had made, but. But maybe redeem yourself for it. Redeem myself. That's the word. Redeem myself for it. And I was at her bedside, and I was there when she was moved from hospital to hospital. That was so hard for you there to support you.

[51:44] Leah: I was just there kind of. Kind of being strong most of the time. But you would just look at her and go, I don't even know Leia. Like, why are we making her suffer like this? This is cruel.

[51:54] Moshe: And, I mean, she had a lot of ups and downs. There were times where she seemed to be getting better and times where she was essentially comatose and times that she was in one of those pressured rooms.

[52:07] Leah: Actively bleeding from every orphanage, bleeding.

[52:10] Moshe: And then we got that call where she had emergency surgery because of a bowel perforation and she had sepsis. And, you know, we got the call that she had been rushed to surgery.

[52:23] Leah: Because she got Covid. We had to be in full. Had to be in full protection gear to go see. It was a journey.

[52:29] Moshe: And, I mean, it was frustrating for me to see this woman that I had essentially grown up with, sort of, at least in my mind, going the same route as my mother. And it made me. It was hard. It was hard for me, but I tried my best to be as strong as I possibly could for you and for the kids and for her.

[52:51] Leah: And when we did an unpopular thing, we also exposed our children to it, even when they had to dress up in protective gear to see her. We have our reasons for doing that, mostly. Again, it comes down to resilience, and I also feel that the monster you don't see is worse. So they could have been at home picturing God knows what rather than being able to see her. And if, God forbid, she did pass, then I didn't want them to lose that opportunity.

[53:16] Moshe: It's not an opportunity that I would have wanted them to lose for anything. And if I had to do it all over again, I still would have spent at least some time with my mother, even in the weeks before her death, because as hard as it might have been, I could have at least had that chance to be there for it. And through the goodwill of God and through lots of prayers and through the.

[53:41] Leah: Amazing work, extreme expertise of the doctors in Montreal. I do have to say the doctors in Montreal are very good at the.

[53:48] Moshe: Jewish General Hospital and the Montreal General Hospital and all the nurses and all the doctors and all the orderlies and I, you know, including the women and the men that mop up the spills.

[53:59] Leah: And whatnot, of which there were plenty.

[54:01] Moshe: Of which there were plenty. They did good work. And I remember the first time we took her out of the hospital, you know, to go for coffee, and she.

[54:10] Leah: Just came back to life in front of her eyes. It was.

[54:13] Moshe: And it was just surreal to see her sitting there, like, having a coffee for the first time after being in the hospital for months and knowing that she was now, you know, getting better and on the mend.

[54:23] Leah: And we were lucky enough to install her into her apartment before we left.

[54:27] Moshe: Yeah.

[54:28] Leah: To see her start on her recovery. And last week, she got the official word that she's in remission, and in a week and a half, she's going to be here. So how does that feel?

[54:37] Moshe: When we came to the end of it and we were getting ready to leave Canada to move to Israel, it was surreal for me because I had made a trip years earlier to say goodbye to my mother, and we thought.

[54:52] Leah: We were doing the same, to be honest. Yeah, it was miraculous.

[54:56] Moshe: And now we were saying goodbye to my second mother, and instead of it being for the last time, we said goodbye to her because she was going to be okay. And it was a complicated set of emotions for me because, of course, I did have, you know, a moment where I asked myself, why did my mother die? And she didn't. But on the other hand, I did say to myself, you know what? You couldn't be there for your mother. You couldn't be there to say goodbye to her. You couldn't save her. But maybe in some small way, you could save your second mother. And in that way, you redeemed yourself and you showed that you could be there and help somebody do something in the same way that you could do nothing. You were helpless before, but now you were there and you were present, and you did everything you needed to do. And you are. Ultimately, you've saved someone. You couldn't save all of them, but you saved at least one. And I felt good about that. It put in mind that story that you often hear about this man that was walking on the beach and he. He saw this and all of these shells and all of these. These creatures were being washed up on the beach, and he saw a man pick up one of them and throw them back in the ocean. And the man approached him and said, what was the point of that? You know, there's so many other creatures that you couldn't. That, you know, that are still going to die. And the man said, yes, but I made a difference to that one. And I felt that way. I felt I couldn't save everyone. I couldn't do all the things that I wanted to do in my life exactly the way that I wanted. I made a lot of mistakes, but I made a difference for this. And that for me, made all the difference.

[56:50] Leah: Yeah. So grief, loss, change, ultimately, they're very similar, even though some hurts worse than the others. And, you know, if I had to summarize, just like everybody else, you need love, support, routine, you know, and understanding.

[57:03] Moshe: Ultimately, during those situations, it's important to be patient. It's important to be understanding. It's important to be patient with yourself as well as others.

[57:11] Leah: So of all the things that somebody could do to support a neurodivergent person through a grief or a trying time or a loss or a big change, what do you think is the most important?

[57:24] Moshe: Well, like I said, it really just comes down to patience and understanding. It really is just about being able to accept that with any change, whether it's a very significant change, like the loss of a parent or someone close to you or moving to a different home or a different city or a different job, there's going to be challenges. And expecting that everything is going to be okay immediately, is setting yourself up for failure. Especially when you have someone who's neurodiverse, especially if you have a child who. Who is already going to be struggling with the same things that come from a change of environment or a change of circumstances. And getting mad at someone, especially a child, for struggling, at least at first, is the wrong approach because it's really easy to go. This is for the best, and this is so much better. And look how much nicer the place is, or look how much better the circumstances are.

[58:24] Leah: But all that does, even for a neurotypical person, is make them hide their feelings from you, which is not how helpful, because then you can't help them.

[58:31] Moshe: Of course not. So, I mean, ultimately, it just comes down to accepting that there is going to be some. There's going to be some time that they're going to need, and it might be short and it might be long, and they will let you know when they're okay again, and that's it. All right, so we're going to wrap things up now. I do want to thank you once again for your support for listening to our podcast. Whether this is the first time or whether you've been following us from the beginning, whether you started halfway through our series or whether you just tuned in last week, we're so grateful for all of your support. We keep breaking ground on meeting. 40 00 50 00 60 00 it's just been amazing to see that there are people out there who actually follow us and comment on us and email us. Of course, we've been really grateful for the partnerships that we've had with arc therapeutic and Munchables whose products we still use on a daily basis. And we're so grateful for their support. The thinking person's guide to autism on Facebook is a wonderful resource. I share in like everything that they post. And they have been one of the first people actually that have come out and talked about us on their channel. So we're really happy for them and all the guests that have appeared on our show, from Adam and beco of studies show on TikTok to Kate and Clark on Instagram, we've had some wonderful talks. We actually were approached by Doctor Temple Grandin yesterday about appearing on our podcast.

[01:00:09] Leah: I have to admit I'm not one to celebrity worship, but this one excites me. I might have to like Fangirl on her a little bit.

[01:00:17] Moshe: We're going to be talking with Doctor Grandin at some point in the next few weeks. We have to nail down the date. Of course. She's a very busy person and she has lots of great things that I'm sure we're going to be talking about when we do do the show. We'll give you lots of notice. And we are going also, Rabbi Weinstein.

[01:00:35] Leah: Is going to be coming on talking about the intersectionality.

[01:00:38] Moshe: Rabbi Weinstein from the Jewish Autistic Network.

[01:00:41] Leah: Is going to be coming on face and no divergency. And also, I believe we're speaking to him about internalized ableism. Ableism.

[01:00:49] Moshe: We're going to be doing a show on that and in a month or so we're actually going to be appearing or at least recording a show on the autism Advocacy network. I can't recall offhand the name of the show right now, but I will post it in the show notes at the end once I look it up.

[01:01:06] Leah: Yes, we're guesting on places now.

[01:01:08] Moshe: It's the first time that we've been invited to be a guest on someone else's podcast. Of course, we're always open to showing up and providing our input. It's very exciting. So keep sharing, keep downloading. Whether you listen on Podbean, who we're also very, very grateful for, I should talk about them a lot more. Thank you very much to Podbean for continuing to host us and allowing us to reach so many people. They're a wonderful hosting site. And yeah, whether you listen to us on Apple or Spotify or Podbean or, you know, listening notes or whatever, we're so grateful. YouTube.

[01:01:43] Leah: I'd also like to note that the kids and I, I think, came up with an idea finally for our Patreon. Ah, you should probably share this on our social media because I think I only shared it on my personal. But Avram has been doing these little character cards that are really adorable and he turned us into characters. So I was thinking, and I asked Avram if he would be willing, you know, for our patrons to send in a picture of themselves and maybe a description of themselves, and he would make them into a character.

[01:02:07] Moshe: Yeah. So if you want to donate to our Patreon or even to our PayPal, throw a few dollars our way, we can see if we can do some cool pictures for you. Of course, if you want to have the kids back on the show, I'm sure they would love to provide their feedback to whatever you want them to talk about and keep interacting with us on our Facebook and our Instagram pages and commenting and liking and downloading on all the platforms where now, you know, when autistic shows up.

[01:02:35] Leah: Any final thoughts for today?

[01:02:37] Moshe: I just want to thank everyone who's listening for allowing me to once again share the story of what I went through about the passing of my mother, who I know is definitely watching us somewhere and is hopefully very proud of all of the good that you and I are doing. And we love her very much.

[01:02:58] Leah: We love her very much. Still.

[01:02:59] Moshe: Thanks for listening. Well, that's our show for today. Now you know, one autistic, just a little bit better. So something you may not know about some autistics is that we often struggle with ending social interactions. So, Leah.

[01:03:16] Leah: All right, Moshe. I'll take care of it. Thank you for listening to now, you know, one autistic. See you next week.

 

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