Each week, I feature a blog at the Genetics and Public Health Blog written by someone who’s experiencing a disease or who’s documenting a loved one’s experience. While I was looking around for suitable blogs to feature–regularly updated, well written, and honest–I came across Kristina Chew’s blog about her autistic 8-year-old son, Charlie.

Reading about Charlie at My Son Has Autism has almost been a spiritual experience. Kristina’s awareness and appreciation of Charlie is inspirational. She balances between taking care of Charlie’s wants and needs, which at times are hard to figure out, and at the same time showing him the unpredictable realities of the world around him that doesn’t always care about individual desires.

Some of you have told me before that you would never want an autistic child because of the hardships of caring for someone who is so walled off from emotions and other people. Keeping in mind that the symptoms of autism spectrum disorder varies from child to child, reading Kristina’s journey with Charlie will help illuminate the human aspect of a disease that is still cloudy and defies understanding.

I’ve never met an autistic child before, but I hope I’ll get to meet Charlie someday. And I hope I can be half the mother to Stephen that Kristina has been to Charlie.