Winter

“If we tolerate prejudice toward any group, we tolerate it toward all groups,” he said. “I couldn’t have relationships that were conditional on excluding my brother—or anyone else. We are all in one fight, and our freedom is all the same freedom.”
― Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

“When parents say, ‘I wish my child did not have autism,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.’ Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.”
― andrew solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

“There is no contradiction between loving someone and feeling burdened by that person; indeed, love tends to magnify the burden.”
― Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

“Labeling a child’s mind as diseased—whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism—may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.”
― andrew solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity