Behind the Curtain

What Autism, CJ, and a Family’s Love Taught Me About “Truth”

For a lot of people in my generation including myself, their first introduction to autism came through Rain Man. A movie. A stereotype. And for years, when I told people my son had autism, the first thing I’d hear was, “Oh, you must crush blackjack with his card counting?” or “What’s his special skill?” Like he was a novelty act. Like that’s what autism meant.

But that wasn’t our story.

CJ was a bright, active toddler. insane gross and fine motor skills, athletic. very verbal like his mother, capable of hundreds of words. I can still hear his feet pounding across the floor, sprinting to the door to greet me after work. His arms spread out wide, running at full speed, yelling “Daddy!” as he leapt up into my arms. The dream of coaching the athletically gifted son was right there in my future, I was watching it appear with my very eyes in real time.

Then he disappeared.

Not physically. But emotionally. Neurologically. Spiritually. He stopped talking. Stopped engaging. Just sat staring at the wall like he’d been pulled behind some invisible curtain.

We got him tested. Checked every box. Doctors ruled out hearing issues and landed on the label: NS - PDD, autism. Regression-based. Severe. No explanation. No cure. No real roadmap forward.

And for years, people kept asking me, “What’s his gift?” I used to get angry. Because at the time, my son didn’t have a gift, he had a broken body. A shredded gut. He was in pain every day. He was eight years old and still in diapers. Diarrhea would leak out and cover the floor, and I’d hold back tears while cleaning it up, wondering how we were supposed to survive this.

Nobody wants to talk about that side of autism.

The 25%, maybe more, maybe less, but a good round number to use for this analysis, who aren’t high-functioning, quirky, or genius-level in math, poetry, coding, really anything besides trying to fit into a world that is difficult to. They’re medically complex. Often nonverbal. And completely trapped.

The “spectrum” is too wide. When we throw everyone under one umbrella, the kids like CJ get erased, ignored, people scream we aren’t giving them the credit they deserve, or even worse that we are marginalizing them. If you know my family at all and CJ’s place in it our world, that couldn’t be any further from the truth!.

But here’s the miracle: he’s starting to come back.

CJ is 25 now. And for the first time in his life, we’re seeing inside his mind, not through speech, but through spelling. Through writing,. through method called spell-to-communicate. We’ve thrown over a million dollars in our journey with him trying to unlock this capability, how do we get him to speak his truth? Through anything that lets him express what’s been locked inside him for two decades.

And now that he can, what is he writing? It’s brilliant. It’s sarcastic. It’s witty. It’s thoughtful. It’s human.

We’re realizing something we always suspected but could never prove:

CJ is not mentally challenged. He’s communication challenged.

That is a world-altering distinction.

And if he is in there, as he always has been, then how many more kids like him are out there? How many are locked in their own minds right now, screaming behind their eyes? Wanting to be heard?

And if that doesn’t force us to ask hard questions about what’s happening to our children… I don’t know what ever will.

Which brings me to what’s going on in the public square right now.

There’s a lot of controversy swirling around Robert F. Kennedy Jr. People are trying to define him, conspiracy theorist, anti-science, dangerous, savior, and patriot. Everyone’s got a label.

But I’ll say this loud and clear:

I don’t care who’s asking the questions.

I don’t care if it’s RFK, Biden, Trump, any other character or someone from the other side of the world speaking another language.

If someone, anyone, is finally willing to fund real, transparent, unbiased research into what’s happening to our kids, then I’m behind it with all of my heart, head, and soul. Not because of who they are, but because of what they’re daring to ask, what answers they may find.

Why has autism exploded over the last 20 years? Why are kids like CJ disappearing behind walls? Why have we never had fully transparent large-scale, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies into the long-term effects of what we’re putting into our children’s bodies?

Why are these questions treated as dangerous instead of necessary?

We’ve been begging for these studies for decades. And instead, we’ve been gaslit. Laughed at. Dismissed as paranoid or political.

This isn’t political. This is fucking personal. For myself, Allison, Cassidy, Olivia, and most importantly for CJ himself, he fucking deserves that.

And yes, maybe the answers won’t be what we want to hear or have suspected. Maybe they’ll implicate things we once trusted. But if the truth helps prevent one more child from suffering the way CJ did, then we have a moral obligation as a society, as human beings to ask. And to listen.

Not later. Now.

So I’ll say it again:

I don’t care who leads the search, as long as we actually search.

For CJ. For the millions like him. For the families still in the dark. For the kids still waiting behind the curtain.

Not because love and human decency demands it.

Because CJ, with every ounce of his heart, head, and soul, demands it.