Xenophobia #AtoZChallenge

Websters dictionary defines Xenophobia as:

"Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign."

To many, autistic people like my brother in law Bil are strange.  They are afraid of "people like that".  They think that "people like that" aren't human, or worse yet, need to be "cured".  Autism isn't a disease. No one needs to be "cured" of autism any more than I should be cured of my love of reading.

Perhaps the fact that autism has become more common will help with the fear of strangers.  If the person with autism is your child or your grandchild, or your child/grandchild's friend, or the artist whose works you are admiring at an open house at an art studio, you will see that person as a human being, and not some kind of statistic.

Although not connected to autism, xenophobia can pop up anywhere in our world with frightening violence - for example, recently in South Africa.


I sometimes wish we could be more like trees.  Walking the other day, my husband pointed this tree out to me.  It must have been grafted, because part of the tree was blooming pink, and part of it was blooming white.

Both in harmony.

One could wish....