My son was about eight years old when he went away from home without me for the first time.
One day at his school, a friend asked if I'd be willing to send him to a camp run by teenagers and children with disabilities similar to his own. The question caught me off guard. I started listing all of Pablo's problems: he couldn't walk, couldn't speak, couldn't feed himself, wore a diaper, and most importantly, he could only fall asleep at night in the arms of me or his father. As I went through this catalog of difficulties, my friend just smiled. She told me to take time to think about it.
I talked it over with my husband, and we decided it might be the beginning of something good for him.
Days passed. We didn't mention it again. When the moment came to actually go through with it, I was seized by terror and wanted to postpone the whole thing. But then I met a young woman who was helping organize the camp—the person who would be caring for Pablo.
Before I could tell her my decision, she wanted to know everything about him, even the smallest details. That reassured me so much I couldn't say no.
So he went—but only on the condition that we could pick him up if he wasn't doing well.
That week was the darkest of my life. Without him, I felt I couldn't do anything, couldn't even walk properly. The days stretched endlessly. Every day I called the camp to ask how he was.
When just one day remained before his return, the phone rang: it was his friends, asking if Pablo could speak to me on the phone.
Speak to me?
I was stunned when I heard him tell me that he'd eaten meat, potatoes, an apple—I didn't know whether to cry or laugh with joy.
The next day my husband and I drove to pick him up. I walked into a world I'd never known. Since Pablo was born, we'd shut ourselves away. Gradually we'd drifted from our friends, mostly to protect our own peace of mind. Now I found myself among people ready to share my fears and accept my son for who he was.
That's when a new way of living began for me too.
That's when a new way of living began for me too.That's when a new way of living began for me too. Being among them—so simple, so genuine—broke down and stripped away all the armor I'd built around myself, the defenses I'd constructed to protect my son and my family.
From that moment on, it was as if he was truly born anew. My protection had been keeping him from growing, from having those small experiences he needed to become independent and strong.
I thought I was irreplaceable. I didn't understand that I was actually holding him back.
Now Pablo feeds himself. He's learning to keep himself clean. But the most important thing is that he's alive in his spirit, with his own ideas, his own way of doing things, his own joys and interests, and most of all his friends—the ones he met five years ago at that first camp. All of this means Pablo has no trouble being with people he doesn't know. Two years ago, for instance, he changed schools.
I was afraid he'd struggle with it, and if I'd trusted my instinct, I would have happily kept him home. I expected him to come back upset, to give me reason to worry. Instead, he came home excited every single day about what he was doing, the new people he was meeting, his new friends. And so, little by little, I followed his lead. He reassured me more and more, day after day.