Gravity Pulls You In

We are thrilled to announce that Gravity Pulls You In has found a home. The anthology is to be published by Woodbine House as part of their Special Needs Collection.

The manuscript will be expanded to make room for additional writing and so we are seeking additional submisssions of poetry and prose.

When selecting pieces, consider that most writing about raising children on the spectrum, aside from the rare stories of recovery and ‘cure’, typically falls into the three-fold journey of discovery/diagnosis, fear/grief, acceptance/lessons learned. While these offer solace to many families who recognize the process in their own lives, we believe there is a yearning for stories that look within this pattern to a deeper connection among parents, to one that broadens the view and dismantles the fear.

A diagnosis of autism was once a life sentence. Children were institutionalized, diagnosed as mentally ill, schizophrenic, considered victims of Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mothers”. The news of autism is still reported to the parents and the public as devastating, a tragedy. While we are not here to discount the very real struggles and challenges faced by some children with autism and their families, the image of the autistic child as unreachable, silent, caught in a prison of repetitive behaviors is not one we recognize. Neither are images of the parent as either feverishly scraping the autism out of her child or serenely offering up platitudes about life’s roses among the thorns of hardship.

These are our children. They enlighten us, delight us, annoy us, and open our hearts to injustice, outrage, exquisite beauty and possibility. We hope to shepherd them to lives bigger and more realized than our own. When that can’t happen, we grieve, we accept, we write, and through that process, we hold on to what we cannot see that may still be on the way.

Submission are limited to 5,000 words. Please send entire manuscript by July 31st, 2008, with SASE to K. Anderson, 53 Christopher Street, Wakefield, RI 02879. It will not be possible to return manuscripts. Those who have submitted in the past are invited to resubmit with new or revised work.

Feel free to direct any questions to kyra@gravitypullsyouin.com.

We are thrilled to announce that Gravity Pulls You In has found a home. The anthology is to be published by Woodbine House as part of their Special Needs Collection.

The manuscript will be expanded to make room for additional writing. See Submissions for details.

Many thanks to the exceptional contributors! We could not have done this without your voices.

We, at Gravity, have been asked for some “wiggle room” in our timeline and so have decided to extend the submission deadline to February 15, 2007.

Letters of receipt will go out this week to those whose manuscripts, though well-written and meaningful, are not the right fit for this anthology. If you do not receive one of those notices, you may assume your work is being considered. Final notifications will be sent out by the end of February.

Thanks to all for your interest in this project. We continue to be moved and inspired by your voices and stories.

Happy 2007. It’s the year of Gravity; It’s the year of being pulled in.

Gravity Pulls You In, a work in progress, is an anthology of beautifully written essays that describe the experiences of parents raising children on the autism spectrum. We are looking for the piercing truth that can be funny, irreverent, illuminating, tender, moving, but always deeply respectful. We invite all voices that will be at once familiar to any parent but also specific to those moving in the world of autism. When the reader picks up this book, it will be either out of recognition or curiosity but when they put it down, the simple and complicated details from these stories will create the possibility of greater connection and understanding among us all.

We are currently accepting submissions of prose and poetry, not to exceed 5,000 words. Deadline: January 15, 2007. Please send entire manuscript with SASE to K. Anderson, 53 Christopher Street, Wakefield, RI 02879. It will not be possible to return manuscripts.

Feel free to direct any questions to kyra@gravitypullsyouin.com.

My son, Fluffy, has Asperger’s Syndrome. In other words, he has autism. Autism includes Asperger’s, at least, in my book. Does it look like autism? Well, that’s a tricky question. What does autism look like?

I’ve come to believe the only thing you can safely say about kids with autism is this: kids on the autism spectrum are on the autism spectrum. Asperger’s Syndrome, Kanner’s, low functioning, high functioning, PDD-NOS, mild, moderate, profound–all essentially meaningless because we parents are simply human people doing our best to raise a smaller human person who means the world to us. To the parents of a child with autism, all that matters is knowing who this little person is, what they need, and how to provide that without losing their own footing, their own center, their own sense of ground.

My son is a talker. Talking is one of his passions. Listening has always been important in as much as the information received allows for further talking–the listening is vehicle for more talking like the pancake is a vehicle for more maple syrup. But listening is more than just important in a self-serving way. It’s a path to connection. It’s a passion too.

His talking and hearing requires that I talk and listen with greater care, with greater intention and clarity. This is a gift. One of the many gifts parenting this five year old boy has given me.

Fluffy recently asked, How fast is the earth spinning? How fast is it spinning through space? Not around the sun, but around itself? At the time, I was stymied, as I often am when presented with his questions. At the time, I allowed that it must be going pretty fast and wondered why, in my cartoon imaginings, when we are hanging upside down like bats, we don’t just fall off like pennies in an upturned hand.

Gravity, mom, he said. And then he thought for a while. I have an idea. Gravity doesn’t really pull you down, it pulls you in. So, if you were upside down, it wouldn’t pull you down, away from the earth, it would pull you in, toward the earth, toward its center.

Huh. Gravity pulls you IN.

He’s right. It does pull you in, not just to the center of the earth but to the center of yourself, if you let it. Things that are weighty, things that demand a closer look, a new approach, a shift in perspective, those things pull you in. Even when you are spinning, even when you are moving much more quickly that you thought was possible, even when you find yourself in territory where instincts alone don’t feel like enough to complete the revolution.

The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 25,000 miles. Every twenty four hours, the earth travels 25,000 miles through space. That means it’s going more than 1,000 miles per hour. That’s fast.

And we’re not falling off.