He Is Her Hero, but He Is Also Mine

Written by Bethanie Milford, LCSW

Edited by Christina Thompson

When Our Lives Changed

Our daughter was three when she was diagnosed with autism, and I was working a demanding job in Child Protective Services. It was the kind of work that stretched employees in every direction, and there was rarely such a thing as a normal 9-to-5.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand the weight of the sacrifice her father was making. He left his career in television and re-entered the sales world, working at local stores—jobs I knew he loathed, but jobs that, combined with my income, allowed us to sustain our family’s basic needs. More importantly, the flexibility of those jobs allowed him to make sure our daughter received her Early Intervention services.

He knew his former industry was changing, and he also knew that he was stepping away from the career he had worked hard to build. He was settling for work that wasn’t what he had envisioned for himself because it was what our family needed.

And his sacrifices didn’t stop there.

The Years He Put Us First

Eventually, I decided to return to college part-time to earn my master’s degree in social work while continuing to work full-time in Child Protective Services. For three years, he cared for our daughter in the evenings so I could go to school. At the time, I didn’t know another way for us to get ahead. We kept going, and he continued sacrificing.

When we eventually relocated to New York City, he transferred stores and continued working in sales. Eventually, he found a position that was somewhat more satisfying, but it still wasn’t his dream. Every so often, I would encourage him to explore other possibilities. Looking back, I think our lives had become so consumed with surviving that there wasn’t much room left for him to ask himself what he wanted or what kind of work might actually make him happy.

When Fear Entered Our Story

In the midst of everything we were already facing, we learned that he had a rare heart condition.

Suddenly, our lives included appointments, procedures, uncertainty, and surgeries. One of those surgeries had to take place just two days after we placed our daughter in her residential education setting.

I still don’t know if I have the right words to describe the bravery I witnessed in him during that time.

He was wrestling with the fear and grief of what was happening with our daughter while simultaneously facing the reality of a serious surgery and all the questions that came with it. Would she be okay? Would he be okay? What would our daughter’s future look like? What would his future look like?

And then there were the questions that weren’t always spoken aloud.

Will I survive this? Will I be here for my family?

There is a strange space that exists between everything is going to be okay and what if it isn’t? Sometimes there simply aren’t words for that space.

I was afraid too. I feared being alone. I feared losing him. I feared our daughter growing up without her father, the person who had quietly rearranged so much of his own life to make sure she had what she needed.

Through all of it, he kept showing up.

For her. For me. For our family.

Finally, His Turn

And then one day, it finally felt like it might be his turn.

Whenever he shows an interest in something, I try to encourage it and see where it takes him. After everything he had sacrificed for our family, all I wanted was for him to have the opportunity to discover something that belonged to him.

Our daughter had been stable in her residential setting for about two years when a completely random conversation with our pet sitter changed something. She mentioned her full-time career, and I noticed that he seemed genuinely interested in what she did.

That was enough for me. I ran with it.

I started researching graduate programs and found a couple of colleges that seemed like possibilities. By this point, I was earning enough that, for the first time, he could take a leap without needing to work. School could be his primary focus.

When I brought the idea to him, it almost felt surreal. He hadn’t been in college in years. A master’s degree wasn’t something he had been planning or even seriously considering. Still, there was one program that stood out, and he applied.

Then the acceptance letter came.

He actually needed me to look at it again because he couldn’t quite believe what he was reading.

He got in.

It was time.

Watching the Joy Come Back

After all those years of putting our family’s needs first, he accepted the offer and began working toward his master’s degree.

And then I started seeing something in him that I hadn’t seen in a long time: joy.

I saw it when he talked about his courses and the things he was learning. I saw it when he talked about his internship and began gaining experience in a field that genuinely interested him. He was excited. He was engaged. And he was doing incredibly well academically.

There was something deeply emotional about watching that happen. For so many years, his decisions had been based on what our daughter needed, what I needed, and what our family needed to survive. Now I was listening to him talk about his interests, his goals, and his future.

I finally got to watch him invest in himself.

And maybe that was what I had wanted for him all along. Not simply a different job or another degree, but the opportunity to find something that made him feel excited about his own future again.

The Truth About Sacrifice

For parents who have spent years raising and supporting an autistic loved one with full support needs, I think it is important that we are allowed to talk about sacrifice.

We don’t sacrifice because our children are burdens. We sacrifice because we love them. We chose to have our daughter, and we choose to love and support her exactly as she is. We aren’t telling these stories because we want extra praise, pity, or recognition.

We tell them because they paint a picture of what some families are actually navigating.

Caregiving can intersect with health concerns, careers placed on hold, educational goals postponed, financial instability, housing insecurity, relationships, and the constant question of how much longer your foundation can withstand everything being placed upon it at once.

It is possible to fiercely love your autistic child and still acknowledge what your family has endured.

Those two truths can exist together.

When Hope Is the Village

That is why I share our story. Not simply to talk about how hard things were, but to offer hope about what can exist on the other side of survival.

There were periods when the life we have today would have seemed almost impossible. We didn’t have a large village surrounding us. We didn’t have endless resources. We were two parents trying to keep our daughter safe while simultaneously trying to keep a roof over our heads, maintain careers, navigate serious health concerns, preserve our family, and somehow continue moving forward.

What we did have was a stubborn kind of hope that wouldn’t allow both of us to give up at the same time.

Sometimes I held it.

Sometimes he held it.

And during the years when it felt like we should have lost everything, he held on the tightest.

He Is My Hero Too

When I watched him finally walk toward something that was his—after years of watching him put our daughter, me, and our family first—I knew this wasn’t simply about earning a master’s degree.

It was about watching the person who had spent so many years helping the rest of us move forward finally get his turn.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts was simply getting to see the joy return to him.

Our daughter has always seen her dad as her hero.

What he may not realize is that after watching all he has sacrificed, endured, feared, survived, and grow through everything we’ve faced—

he is mine too.