Monica Holloway, author of Cowboy & Wills

Monica Holloway joins us today on From Left to Write for an interview about her book Cowboy & Wills and about her life as a writer. Read the inspired posts by the From Left to Write bloggers about Cowboy & Wills and join the discussion.

Monica will also be on hand today, Thursday September 2nd at 1pm PST for an online Livestream chat here on From Left to Write. Please join us!

Q: Where is your favorite place to write?

Oddly enough, I write in my Jeep.  I think sitting outside Wills’s preschool and then elementary school or in waiting rooms at various therapies set me up for writing on the go.  Now when I sit down at my desk, my brain says, “Hey, you’re writing –better make it good.”  And then, I have no ideas.  If I’m in my car, I’m not really “working,” I’m just hanging out.  And, surprisingly, I get a ton of work done.  I wrote my first book entirely in my car.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child? As an adult?

My favorite book as a child was Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne.  I have so many favorites as an adult.  I’d have to start with My Home is Far Away by Dawn Powell.

Q: Are you in a book club? Tell us about it.

I’m not in a book club, but I am at book clubs almost every month.  I participate with book clubs when they read my books, and it’s a blast.  (And I usually have great food.  Generous readers, that’s what I have.)

Q: Do you have a tip for writers? (e.g., how to overcome writer’s block, find your voice, routines, etc.)

Write about what you know.  Find the stories that move and motivate you because if you’re inspired, your readers will be too.  I’m talking about memoir here.  If you’re writing fiction, write about what intrigues you and keeps you on the edge of your seat emotionally.  In fiction, you can research and write whatever you’d like.  You don’t at all have to stick with what you know.

Q:  What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekend?

My weekends are almost always spent having one day close to the house with Wills, Michael and the dogs and the other day driving somewhere with the same gang (and sometimes friends joining in) out to the desert, up to the mountains or cruising up and down the coast.  Wills loves to find new places and has this great book called “Afield and Afoot in Los Angeles County.”  Last summer, it was our goal to do every hike in that book.  We’re still working on getting that done.  Mostly because we go out of Los Angeles County a lot, so the book doesn’t apply.

Mostly, we’re outside, we’re driving and we’re looking for waterfalls and trails.  I spend my weekends happily covered in dust and dog fur.  (And don’t even try to picture my car.  There’s usually a golden retriever drooling out each back window as we whiz by and that drool usually ends up on the side of the car.  Wills sits between them playing DJ with my IPod.)

Neena from http://www.hooeycritic.com asks:

Q: You seemed to struggle a bit to find a place where you and your son could fit in amongst other parents and children.  As you son ages do you find yourself facing the same struggle or are there new ones that emerge?

I think in many ways, my struggle to fit in came with my own personality, including my own anxieties about not wanting to show how frightened I was or admitting that I was really struggling.  I can honestly say that most of the parents we’ve met along the way have been more than supportive and welcoming.  But when Wills was very young and really having a difficult time, I wanted to stay hidden, too – just Wills and I in our own little world.  With Wills’s profound stranger anxiety, he never wanted to leave the house.  It terrified him.  But isolating him would have been a huge mistake.

I was shoved out into the world, not only by the encouragement of Wills’s therapist, Katherine, but by a book I read. Temple Grandin’s THINKING IN PICTURES made me realize that I could not and should not isolate my son.  And whatever anxieties I was feeling about how uncomfortable and scared he was, I needed to deal with myself.  For Wills, I needed to be confident, strong and reassuring that he could handle a social situation.  Temple wrote that one of the best gifts her mother ever gave her was to insist that she go out into the world.  Otherwise, she wouldn’t have done it and might have remained isolated her entire life.  Even as a small child, Temple’s mother did not let her isolate herself.  That’s all I needed to know.  And that’s when Wills and I got out into the world.

Wills is now 13 and I find it so much easier.  For one thing, I have a great circle of friends and many parents around me who are going through similar struggles.  Also, Wills is so much more confident now and that is also calming for me.  He loves to be out in the world and he’s very curious about it.  It is SUCH a pleasure seeing him enjoying himself and laughing and meeting new people.  That changed everything for me.

What advice could you give to any parent struggling to find friends or a support system?

Don’t lead by my example.  Search out a support group immediately.  Find parents who can stand beside you and listen.  If you can afford it, get a therapist for yourself – someone who is there just for you.  There are organizations in most communities now; if you Google you’ll probably find them.  Ask your school for ideas of support groups or maybe start one yourself.

Lisa from http://www.grandmasbriefs.com/ asks:

Q: In what ways has your experience with Cowboy tamed your own OCD tendencies?

Lisa, I had to laugh at this one.  I wish I could say they were tamed, but, alas, they still plague me.  Not as much, but I do go on quite the cleaning spree if I’m stressed.  I think watching Wills struggle with his own OCD tendencies is what really keeps me in check.  I know he’s watching me, and I try very hard to show him that I have learned some skills to calm down those impulses.  I also confess immediately if he sees me over-obsessing so he knows it’s not about him, it’s about me.

Michelle from http://honestandtruly.blogspot.com asks:

Q: As the mother of an autistic son (thankfully high functioning), this book was really hard for me to read – especially the beginning because I saw so much of my own son there.  We’ve been very fortunate to have the support of Early Intervention from the state with therapies provided with a sliding scale cost paid to the state from the age of 17 months until 3.  From the age of 3, he’s received all therapies he needed from the local school district – a free, very good and very progressive preschool that specializes in special needs and at risk children (having the neurotypical role models that so many need).  You don’t seem to have any of this available to you.  Is California that unsupportive of special needs children, or was it a choice you made to not pursue those paths?

These services were available to us, but we did not reach out for them.  It still baffles me.  I just asked Michael what his opinion was of why we didn’t go through those channels, and it’s complicated.

Part of it was that we felt so blessed that Michael had just gotten his first big television deal when Wills was diagnosed, and we could afford what Wills needed.  We lived in a tiny rental house, but we somehow felt like we could handle it.  And I think we did that because I went to our local elementary school where the principal told me that Wills would have to attend their school and fail before we could receive services.  And even then, it didn’t mean that he could attend a smaller, private school or even get an aide.  This scared me so much, to think of Wills, who I knew could not reach out to anyone in those years, just disappearing among all of those kids and no one noticing, that I never went back to it.

I didn’t feel very confident or strong in those days – and I’m not a person who usually backs down.  I research, I complain, I ask questions.  But I think when it came to asking for services and fighting for what Wills needed, I felt small.  And that’s where advocating for your child comes in.  If you can’t do it, find someone who can.

I hope no one feels the way I did – EVER!  Don’t do what I did!

But that certainly changed.  Now, I go with my gut, and I feel much more confident.  No stone unturned.

You mention in the book a mom who met you and immediately began discussions of the diet “solution” – have you ever tried any of those changes or worked with other alternative solutions from chiropractors to homeopathic doctors and more?  If so, what did you learn from them?

We did try the diet and didn’t notice a big change in Wills.  Having said that, I have seen it do wonders for other children.  I’m not saying it “cured” them, but I’ve seen significant improvement.  I don’ t know enough about it to say whether that lasts or not.

Wills hated the chiropractor, it terrified him and he didn’t want to be touched.

Animals are the closest thing to homeopathic we got.  Last year, Wills began riding horses every week with a therapist and a trainer.  He knows everything about horses – everything.  And when he climbs in the saddle, I see his face completely relax.  He’s in the best emotional place when he’s up there.

With my son turning seven this fall, he’s beginning to realize more and more that he’s different from others (yay, social awareness). How do you explain your child to himself in a way he can understand and accept without losing confidence in himself?

This is such an important question.  This is what Wills’s therapist, Katherine, told us.  “If a child asks a question, answer it.  But don’t give them more information than they need.  They might not be asking the ‘big’ question, but are, instead, more curious about the situation at hand.”

For instance in the book when we’re at occupational therapy and Wills asks me, “Why don’t other kids come here?”  I explained, “Other kids do come here, just not the kids in your class.”  And then I explained how every person in the world is different, and we all struggle with something.  I gave him examples of how other children he knew had tutors or speech therapists.  And for Wills, he was needing help learning to hold a pencil and to balance on a bicycle, which is why we were going to OT.  And then I was quick to point out all the things Wills could do without needing help at all.

So I tried to answer his questions, but also raise his confidence.  Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t.  Sometimes, he just needed to cry over the fact that all his friends could tolerate a movie theatre and he could not — and that it really stinks to be the one who can’t go or can’t catch the ball or whatever it is.  Sometimes it’s a lot to just sit in that moment with him.

And of course – how many animals do you have now?

Okay, we’ve brought it waaaay down.  We have two golden retrievers – Buddy who we get at the end of the book, and a new puppy, Leo Henry.  We adopted two beautiful bunnies from Bunny World here in LA, Wills has four hermit crabs and our very last hamster, California Grey, just died.  And I hope that’s the end of the hamster brigade.  Now Wills wants a kitten.  Stay tuned…

Jennifer from http://www.wantapeanut.com/ asks:

Q: As a mother of a 3 year old boy with autism, I want to thank you for writing a book filled with such love and hope. Your hard work, and of course Wills’s, seems to be paying off in spades.

1. You mention how isolating it can be to have a child with autism. Writing, though a wonderful outlet, is also often a solitary task. How were you able to balance dedicating yourself to your child with your writing, and maintaining some sense of yourself?

When Wills was very young, I did not balance my personal/professional life well at all.  I’m not sure anyone can.  Lucky for me, my husband was able to support us and I was a fulltime mom.

Often I was too exhausted to write anything at the end of the day but when I did, it was a great emotional and creative outlet for me.  Wills was six-years-old before I became published and began my writing “career.”  And even then, it was tough to juggle.  I think that’s how I became so comfortable writing in my car.  I was always outside of school or in a waiting room at various therapies where I could be there for Wills.  I learned to write in any half hour or fifteen minute period of time I had.

In terms of keeping a sense of myself, I think I’m just now getting that back – and Wills is 13.  I hope that’s not discouraging, but when I look back, I don’t see that as such a negative thing.  I was so lucky to be able to stay home with him and be with him twenty-four hours a day in those early years.  I wouldn’t change that for anything.  It would have helped me to know that this time was coming.  I think the hardest thing about those days was worrying that my entire life would be consumed by my son.  And that has not been the case.  He only enhances it.

2. You touch a little bit on how much your relationship with your husband has been affected by your son’s challenges. It sounds like you had some pretty tough times. How has your marriage improved now that Wills has made so much progress and what advice would you give for those of us just starting out on this journey?

There were times I was positive that my marriage would not survive.  We all have different issues in our marriages, but I think a similar difficulty that I hear about quite a bit when I talk to families (and heaven knows I experienced it myself), is that husbands and wives are on different time tables in terms of dealing with the diagnosis and what that might mean for the future.  So there’s a lot of tension there.  And the financial strain of the therapies and the special schools only add to the difficulty between a couple.  It’s a huge challenge.

My husband and I ended up in therapy and, luckily, our insurance paid for most of it.  I don’t think either one of us wanted to admit that we were terrified and (this is the worst thing of all because you love your child more than anything on this earth and it’s a difficult thing to admit) but we both had to deal with the disappointment of the diagnosis.  We actually had to grieve together.  And we both had to admit that we each felt guilty about it.  We both felt that it was somehow our fault, which, of course, it wasn’t.

And guess what?  It’s only been great news that Wills wasn’t “what we’d expected.”  What fun would that have been?  He’s completely changed our lives for the better in every way, and we are so grateful for him.  But we didn’t know that then.

April from http://formerlyaprildawn.blogspot.com asks:

Q: You wrote at one point about the mother who claims to have cured her child’s autism with a change in diet. Did you follow that child’s progress? How is he (she?) doing today? You also mentioned you were considering doing the same, but it didn’t come up again. Did you try that diet? Did you see any difference?

Thanks, April.  This is a great question, and it comes up a lot at my book readings.  I will say without a doubt, that the diet seemed to help that child.  In fact, I could tell when he had gone off the diet because he lacked focus and seemed much more impulsive.  So for him, I think it was a great thing.  For Wills, I didn’t notice a big change at all.

I’m a mom and not a doctor or a scientist, but that child’s autism was very different from Wills’s, and I wonder if the diet worked for him because of those differences.  I have no idea.  But Wills had early onset autism, meaning that he was autistic from birth.  We didn’t notice a big change in him, unlike the mother who did the diet.  That little boy was functioning typically until he received his MMR vaccinations.  And I know it’s a big controversy and since that was not my experience, I hesitate to go into it.  But I wonder if that’s why the diet helped that child, but not Wills.

There’s just so much we still don’t know, which is very frustrating.

Would I say that the child was cured?  No.  I will only say that it seemed to help a lot, which is a wonderful thing.

I loved the book, and bawled at the end. I think your story covered many of the fears and hopes and frustrations of parenthood in a universal way. Thanks so much for sharing it with us!

Thank you so much.  I’m so happy that the book struck you in a universal way because that’s what I find has been really true – all of us as parents share many of the same dreams and worries, regardless of what our kids are facing out there.

Visit Monica Holloway’s website and the publisher’s website.

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