Belief Makers

I am a morning person. This works out very well in our home as no one else would even dream of getting up at 4:30 am. The beauty of this for me is an entire 90 minutes of "quiet time". The only time during my day when I am completely alone and I cherish every second of it. Lately I have been using my "quiet time" to read random, senseless, uniquely thought provoking fiction. My latest treasure is "Sunday's at Tiffany's" by James Patterson. It is a book about a woman (Jane) currently living her life to meet the expectations of others (most significantly mom) who is reunited with her most admired childhood friend Michael. Michael is her imaginary childhood friend who left her on her ninth birthday who is now a "real person" others can see.

What I have been fascinated with is Jane's relationship with Michael. It is the same now that he is real as it was when he was imaginary (minus the sexual tension now that they are 32). It is a beautiful, loving, comfortable, easy, amazing relationship and for the first time in the book, Jane doesn't care what the people in her life think. She is once again "herself" when she is with Michael. I began to think back to when my daughter Aly had her imaginary friend. What was happening in our lives, how our family was interacting and realized that "Theresa" came into Aly's life at about the time David was diagnosed with autism and our family was a bit unsettled to say the least.

All imaginary friends have one thing in common, "unconditional love". We are all perfect in the eyes of our imaginary friends. We are all "good enough" for everything and anything we want to do or be. No wonder so many of us have imaginary friends as children. For those of you with children, introduce yourself to your child's imaginary friend. Get to know them. Who they are will give you priceless insight into what is important to your child.

I invite you all to experiment with me again. In addition to adding clowns to your lives, create an imaginary friend for yourself. Learn what you are craving in your life and then ask the real people around you for it! Let me introduce you to Tiffany... she says I am the most beautiful person she has ever met.

Love to all,
Kathy

Labels: all blogs, autism, kathy decastro, philosophy