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Good Reading : August 2012
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www. . o rg.au good reading august 2012 22 Lisa Nops and her husband, Michael, lived what seemed like perfect lives. They traversed the globe and lived in places as disparate as Malaysia, France, Sri Lanka and Bahrain. But they didn’t have any children and keenly felt a sense of emptiness. After many years of painful disappointments, however, Lisa finally gave birth to a daughter, Sally, in 1998. Plump and blue-eyed, Sally was everything that the couple had hoped for. She was placid and preferred to sleep rather than cry and make loud noises. But despite her overwhelming joy, Lisa noticed that her daughter was not acting like other toddlers of the same age; she was lagging behind in important developmental stages. After many years of struggling to obtain an explanation for the source of Sally’s problems, the definitive diagnosis came as a shock: Lisa’s much-longed-for daughter had profound autism. The heartbreak and the family’s subsequent difficult journey has become the subject of Lisa’s poignant memoir, My Life in a Pea Soup, which won the 2012 Finch Memoir Prize. The book is a frank account of Lisa’s emotional battle to come to terms with her daughter’s disability. When I ask Lisa about her memoir’s unusual title, she laughs. ‘For the last 12 to 13 years I feel like I’ve been bouncing around in a very thick soup. We have a profoundly autistic daughter, and sometimes you have clearer days but then the next day it’s a bit of a fog. The spark for Lisa’s memoir was kindled when the couple were living in Bahrain, where they were running an early-intervention home program for Sally. ‘Week after week, bizarre things would happen,’ says Lisa. ‘For example, one of the trainers told me that a girl who had been Sally’s main carer was a prostitute. I don’t know if she was or not, but the whole thing was just so bizarre, so I thought I’d write a story about all these events. I thought, What was I doing employing a lady who’s a prostitute? And that’s when the seed was sown and I started to write about my life. ‘I was surprised by how freely the story came. The more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it. The first draft was a bit raw, but the second draft was more about my life over the past 13 years, and it read much better as a story,’ says Lisa. She has now come to terms with Sally’s condition, and her love for her daughter is evident throughout the book. But people who have never encountered someone with autism can find it difficult to understand Sally’s complex condition. ‘I think a lot of people are quite shocked when they first meet her. They don’t actually know how to react. She has a lovely personality, but not when she’s screaming. Then she’s horrible! ‘She’s either really gorgeous or a bit of a screaming mess. I think it comes down to some people having a lovely karma, and a child like Sally is not a problem for them. Other people struggle with people with disabilities, so it comes down to the person and their attitude.’ What strikes me most about Lisa, after chatting to her and reading her memoir, is her positive attitude. ‘I went through the cycle of shock and then anger. The acceptance took a long time to come, but eventually it did,’ says Lisa. ‘It took years and we had a lot of really lovely people to help us. ‘We also did the Son-Rise Program, which is an intensive, one-on-one program in which the parents play a big role. They reinforce the idea that your child is a blessing and that you have a choice about your attitudes. When they said that to me, I went “God, you don’t know how hard my life is!” But it’s true; if I’m in a grumpy mood, Sally feeds off it. But Lisa’s account of heartbreak to hope is a book not just to help those who are experiencing the challenges of autism. It’s for anyone undergoing any kind of trial that life throws at them. ‘It’s a journey for anyone who has undergone any kind of heartbreak in their life. The pain sometimes feels so raw that you think you’re never going to get through it. But you can. There is light at the end of the tunnel.’ MyLifeinaPea Soup by Lisa Nops is published by Finch, rrp $29.99 . ‘I was surprised by how freely the story ca me. The more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it. Lisa Nops learning to swim through soup Plenty of people have written books about their encounters with a wide range of diseases, disorders and conditions. But there aren’t all that many memoirs written by a parent of an autistic child. LISA NOPS, author of the award-winning My Life in a Pea Soup, chats to ALESHA EVANS about what it’s like to bring up a child with autism. 22_upclose_b.indd 22 5/7/12 3:27:41 PM
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