Start Here…
If you found your way here, it wasn't by accident.
You were probably searching for something…answers, support, a sign that someone out there understands what your life actually looks like. Not the polished version. The real one. The one where you cry in the shower so your child can't hear you. The one where you research until 2am and still feel like you know nothing. The one where you love so fiercely it physically hurts. The one where your secretly exhausted but cant let the world know.
If you’re any of those things or all of those things…then you're in the right place.
My name is Jess. And I built this for you.
Where it all began…
I'm a single mother raising the most extraordinary little human I’ve ever known. His name is Gio. He is four years old. He has autism. And he is the reason this space exists.
Long before his diagnosis, before the IEP meetings, before the therapy waitlists and before the late-night research spirals…there was a Thanksgiving dinner that changed our lives in ways unimaginable. Within just hours after cutting the turkey, enjoying food and football and embracing big hugs from relatives, my then 18-month-old son was fighting for his life.
What started as croup became a medical emergency faster than I could process. Within 24 hours, Gio was placed into a medically induced coma, where he stayed for three weeks.
Three weeks of watching a machine breathe for my baby. Three weeks of talking to him with no response. Three weeks of gently squeezing his lifeless hand and just hoping he’d squeeze back. Three weeks of the type of fear that rewires something in you permanently.
When he finally came back, he had to relearn everything. How to walk. How to talk. How to swallow. And as a mother, I celebrated every milestone twice…once for when he first did it, and again for when he learned to do it all over again.
We worked hard. We celebrated the small wins. But as time went on, something became clear: his language wasn't catching up. I enrolled him in speech therapy. I sought answers. I requested a school-based assessment.
Once he completed his assessment, I was informed that we’d discuss the findings over zoom. So I found myself on a Zoom call with six faces on a screen…expecting to hear a detailed plan for how to enhance his speech skills, but instead I was unexpectedly hit with the sudden words that I was not completely prepared to hear:
"We believe your son meets the criteria for an autism diagnosis."
I don't remember my response. I don’t remember the rest of the meeting. I don’t remember closing the laptop….I just remember sitting in silence, feeling as if the world had quietly shifted underneath me without asking. My mind felt shattered, yet empty at the same time. Somewhere in the other room, Gio was engaged in a full out war between monster trucks and dinosaurs, completely unaware of the devastation invading my mind, body and soul. He had no idea. And I felt an unspoken duty to keep it that way.
The turning point…
In the days that followed, I moved through grief in the way most of us do….quietly and in pieces. Most days I cried in the shower, if not in the car. I allowed my blackout curtains to help me shut out the world and invited the numbness to wash over me, because it hurt much less than feeling everything all at once. While these feelings made it increasingly difficult to navigate my day to day life, my family didn't quite know what to say and my friends didn’t either because they still had typical kids who hit typical milestones. My new reality was like a foreign planet to them. And because of that…a unique loneliness slowly began to creep into my world…it was the kind of loneliness that nobody warned me about, the kind of loneliness that comes with this journey that you can only understand if you're living it.
But underneath the loneliness, confusion, worry, guilt and exhaustion, something else was silently growing. A question I couldn't stop asking:
Where are the other moms who know what it feels like to celebrate eye contact like it's the Super Bowl? The moms who understand why a good day at speech therapy makes you cry in the parking lot? The moms who understand that loving your child and grieving the life you imagined for them can happen at the exact same time?
Not the experts. Not the textbooks. Not the well-meaning people who had never sat on a waiting room floor with a child who couldn't tell them what was wrong.
The real ones. The ones with little sleep, partial guidance and no help. The ones who are doing the impossible, every single day, despite the odds, somehow.
Why I built this...
That question became this space.
Somehow Mama is a community built by a real mother in the middle of a real struggle…not someone who figured it all out and came back to teach you, but someone who is still figuring it out, right here alongside you.
I am not a doctor, nor am I a therapist. I am a single mom who has researched possible programs, home activities and holistic therapies until 3am (many many nights), who has apologized to strangers at least a million times for her overstimulated son’s behavior, who has learned to live with the fear that riddles the entire body during unexpected moments of elopement, who has mastered the art of silently crying in closets so that my son wouldn't hear. That is my qualification. And I believe it is enough.
This space exists for the single moms. The overwhelmed moms. The moms who Googled "autism resources" at midnight and felt more confused after than before. The moms who have never heard of a CalABLE account or a Medicaid waiver or an IEP advocate….and feel like they are constantly behind in a game nobody explained the rules to.
You are not behind. You are not failing. You are simply navigating something that most people will never fully understand and you are doing it with more grace and strength than you realize.
Everything I wished existed...
I built the site I needed and couldn't find. Here is what's you’ll find here:
Stories — because the most powerful thing one mother can do for another is say "me too."
Resources — the links, programs, and phone numbers I wish someone had handed me on day one.
Financial Help — SSI, ABLE accounts, Medicaid waivers, IEP rights. All in plain & simple English, no confusing jargon.
Sensory Tools — what sensory processing actually means, and the products and activities that have helped real families like ours.
Self Care — because you matter too. Not in a hashtag way. In a you-cannot-pour-from-an-empty-cup way.
That's what's here. But more than the resources, recommendations and guides….what's here is you, finally finding somewhere that gets it.
From one mama to another...
I don't have all the answers. I probably never will.
But I have lived this. I am living this. And I promise you: every single word on this site was written with you in mind. The burnt out you. The confused you. The worried you. The one who somehow keeps going even on the days when going feels impossible.
So start whenever you’re ready. Browse the stories. Check the resources. Or just sit here quietly for a minute and find comfort in knowing that there is someone out there who is navigating the same challenges as you…right now.
Whatever you choose to do next… just know that however you found your way here….I am just so so glad you did.
With all my love,
~Jess
