Marriage + Autism: Navigating Marriage While Raising a Child with Special Needs: Recent Episodes
Juan Crespo and Kathy Riojas
Life wasn't supposed to be this way. A married couple of 13 years shares their experience of how an Autism diagnosis of one of their children forever changed their life trajectory. Everyone tells you that marriage is hard, but how hard would marriage get when you add the unique dynamic of special-needs parenting? Will this marriage survive? Join us as we talk candidly about marriage, family and love.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced the world to stop, and we were no different. Living life in a slower, more intentional way was liberating and eye-opening. For the first time Kathy was able to be more engaged with her children and family. While the rest of world was waiting for normal to resume, Kathy was determined to never go back to normal living again.
In this episode, Kathy shares the pitfall to always choosing to look at life's experiences through the lens of positivity. There is value and honor in operating with the self-awareness to acknowledge that sometimes life is hard. In a culture that says to always choose happy, what happens when we choose honesty instead?
In this episode, Juan shares the instrumental role he and four other colleagues play in creating Autism awareness at work. Their advocacy efforts lead to a major change in insurance policy. Kathy shares the outlet that she uses to also shine a light on Autism awareness, acceptance and current Autism research. Individually, Juan and Kathy are working to fulfill initiatives that are important to them, but no one is prioritizing the marriage. The only option at this point is to just have the marriage survive, but it is soon realized that this way of operating is not sustainable long-term.
Kathy discusses how she combats all the "shoulds" that she thinks or hears, particularly centered around birthday celebrations. Does every kid always need a birthday party? Listen as she shares how the Riojas-Crespo family chooses to celebrate their youngest son - sans cake and gifts.
All of a sudden we find ourselves lacking coverage for something we truly believe is essential for our son. While we were expecting to allocate resources to particular parts of Jacob's interventions, we had no idea the amount of insurance issues we could face.
The red flags were all around us, but yet we found ourselves in the midst of denial. Juan and I share what it was like as we individually processed the scary reality that something seemed different about our son. We anticipated the worst, but hoped for the best.
We're Kathy and Juan, parents to three amazing children, one of whom has Autism. The diagnosis impacted every aspect of our life, particularly our marriage.