Holiday Reflection

For the past week, the production team for this series took a temporary hiatus from interviews, meetings and editing, but that does not mean our work had stopped.

The Thanksgiving holiday gave us the time to return to our own homes and reflect on the progress we have made with this series.

In addition to writing scripts and preparing the web page for this series, I spent a significant amount of time this holiday replaying the interviews from the past several weeks in my memory, piecing together the stories I've heard in order to find commonalities and differences.

My mind returns to Adam in Kansas and his mom's devotion to recovering him; Michael and his dad, Andy, in Missouri and their fight to get Michael the technology he needs to communicate; and, of course, Jeremy and his mom's struggle to find the proper diagnosis.

I spent the last several days sharing with my family and friends these unique stories. I was surprised and relieved to speak with members of my family, who I initially assumed would know little about autism, were, in fact, familiar with the vaccine debate and the continual increase of children diagnosed with autism.

The amount that my family already knew about the spectrum was eye-opening; I'm positive that this series is being aired at the perfect time - before the winter holidays, forcing people to discuss the issue among their own families, much like I did at my house this past Thanksgiving.

It seems that people not in the autism community are finally asking what the spectrum is and why is it so vast. I feel the public is ready to hear, so we, as journalists, are ready to share.