Letter to the Camp That Called Itself Care
For the mother who fled. For the child they tried to fix. For me.
You called it therapy. You called it help. You called it a camp.
But what you meant was containment. What you meant was compliance.
What you meant was: “We will take your child if you do not surrender them.”
A Florida mother was told she’d be arrested if she didn’t enroll her autistic child in a state-run “therapy camp.”
She fled the state. She packed up her life and ran—not from danger, but from the people who claimed to protect her.
No headlines. No outrage. Just a TikTok video and a trail of fear.
I am autistic. I am a mother.
And I am telling you now:
Autism is not a problem to be fixed.
It is the solution to a world that forgot how to feel.
It is the scream that breaks the silence.
It is the glitch that reveals the truth.
You treat our children like broken machines.
You measure their worth in eye contact and obedience.
You call it progress when they stop stimming, stop resisting, stop being themselves.
But I call it erasure. I call it violence. I call it theft.
You do not get to parent my child.
You do not get to rewrite their wiring.
You do not get to decide what “normal” looks like.
You do not get to take my child from me
because they flap their hands
or scream when the world is too loud
or refuse to make eye contact with a stranger who calls themselves a therapist.
You do not get to call it care when it feels like a cage.
They will forget. We will remember.
They will silence. We will scream.
They will erase. We will archive.
They will cage. We will howl.
They will call it care. We will call it what it is.
We are the encrypted breath. We are the pulse beneath the silence.