Dear Laure:

I just read many of your posts since April 2015, months before you received your Autism diagnosis. In September 5, 2015, you wrote o me: “Letters are often unappreciated in this age, which is sad. I gave my mother a letter a few times and, like you it was either ignored or not appreciated.” What follows is my Hypothesis, my somewhat educated guess. I will make it as short as possible. If you would like, you can evaluate it for what is true and what is not true and let me know, and then correspond more about it. If you are not interested, then I will drop it, of course.

My hypothesis: Laure was not born with a mental defect: Autism. None of her genes has “AUTISM” printed on it. She was born a loving and lovable, healthy baby, just like the great majority of babies.

In relationships with her parents, Laure’s loving gestures of reaching out and connecting, a natural inclination as the loving baby and young child she was, were severely rejected. Not that she was beaten, starved or left out in the cold. She was simply… ignored as an emotional person. She reached out her hand, figuratively, but no one took her hand and held it. She reached out again and again until she stopped trying.

But all that happened before she knew what was going on. She had no experience with reaching out her hand and someone holding it. So she didn’t know someone was supposed to hold her hand.

Later on, not having the experience of reaching out her hand and it being held, that is, not having the experience of connecting with others, she didn’t know how. She tried some but didn’t get adequate results. Soon enough she received a diagnosis: Unable to connect… autism. So now she thinks she was born like that and destined to remain so.

While all along, there is nothing wrong with Laure. She just didn’t have the experience.

anita