In Seattle during the winter of 1987 I attended a festival of various products used in healing by practitioners of the New Age movement.  There were books, tapes, dietary supplements, music performances, and psychics.  I stayed away from the latter as they charged too much for their services which might be without any good value.  I enjoyed the music the most–predominately contemporary and meditative.  I filled out all prize drawings that were available for the product promotions.  It was a good thing that I had entered them as I was informed at a later date that I had won a cassette tape of subliminal messages hidden amid recorded sounds of soothing ocean waves.

I was given a choice of the available selections and options to purchase additional ones.  For my free one, I choose one for appetite or hunger control for my eating disorder.  I ordered two additional ones–on healing and health.  I was very curious and hopeful as to how much effect the subliminal messages would have.  They are based upon the premise that the unconscious mind could hear and receive influences from hidden suggestions even though they are inaudible to the conscious mind.  I played these tapes mostly during meditation.  From another company, I purchased several other tapes for self-hypnosis on selected topics: healing, more restful or efficient sleep, and relaxing the eyes for Kris.  Kris’ eyes tended to get tired very easily after working all day looking at the computer screen from eyestrain.  Due to the fragile condition of his eyes, he was more vulnerable.  I wanted to combine several methods in hope of better results.

After listening to my therapeutic tapes for a while I began to notice that I had gained a greater positive attitude in my health and had fewer negative thoughts about it.  I had become more relaxed and my attention span had continued to increase.  I began to avoid situations where food temptation was too great especially late at night when digestion enters the lowest ebb.  This was an influencing factor to leave the Sri Chinmoy Centre where over eating so late into the evening was difficult to resist.  Though I wasn’t by any means cured, I continued to make some progress though very gradually.

To further my soul searching and explore things in Seattle, I attended various churches and organizations.  One fall day in 1986 as I was driven through the north Capitol Hill area, close to the University Bridge, I discovered the Vedanta Society (Hindu sect) that met late Sunday mornings in an old house with live-in quarters for the caretakers.  About a hundred people attended the weekly services, many of who came from India.  After a few hours of service and study of the scriptures, we had a potluck feast mostly of Indian cuisine.  Since I lived about three miles from there, I often walked to get some exercise.  After attending regularly for several months during the first part of 1987, I stopped going because I felt that too much time was being spent on the doctrines.  This had been an established religion for millenniums and some of the teachings were very valid.  By the time I finished lunch there it would already be mid afternoon.

Shortly after I left the Sri Chinmoy Centre, I had checked out the Unity Church that was only a mile from me.  It was located in the Denny-Regrade area near downtown Seattle.  I had received the idea from two women from the meditation center who also went, but for different services.  It was a huge church, with three services on Sundays that was basically a blend of Christianity with some Eastern beliefs.  I mostly attended the earliest service so I would have enough time to walk to other things in Capitol Hill.

Organized by a few women from Unity church was the Women’s Spirit Circle that met at the church fellowship hall one Saturday morning a month.  I began to attend during the summer of 1988 as a opportunity to meet more people over a potluck breakfast with a variety of activities: dance, crafts, introduction to Native American spiritual practices and meditations with spiritual exercises.  We also had guest speakers on topics of general spiritual issues and personal experiences.  I was enthusiastic about the meetings for over a year until the spring of 1990 when I had gained as much from the activities as I wanted and needed to get away from the constant temptation of the food that hindered my spiritual growth.

I also explored several religious organizations, including Buddhism, Quakerism, and Judaism of which is discussed in greater details in another chapter.

 

In addition to practices for my spiritual health, I had searched for additional things for my physical health–pure filtered water, filtered air, and organically grown produce.  I had articles about the increasing contamination of tap water.  During the mid eighties, Kris and I had purchased an elaborate water filtration system with carbon-based and resin-based filters that were installed under our kitchen sink with a separate faucet that ran from the top.

A few years later during the late eighties, we had also bought the state-of-the-art large air filter device and an air ionizer we placed upstairs.  We used it when the air quality was at it worst.  We didn’t like using it too much as it made a lot of noise from the fan.  The ionizer created negatively charged ions into the air for a greater calming effect.  We kept it on all the time since it was quiet.  Positively charged ions tend to create higher levels of agitation or anxiety.

During the winter of 1987, I went to a few meetings and demonstrations about the healthful benefits of growing and consuming organically grown produce.  Since this movement of reviving the more natural means of farming without use of any pesticides or artificial fertilizers was just beginning, the availability of organic fruits and vegetables were still very limited.  Shopping at health food grocers for fresh food wasn’t convenient.  The only way that I could obtain a steady supply of organically grown foods was to grow them myself.  At one of the meetings in early February, I had picked up an application for a pea patch in Seattle and sent it off.

I was very lucky to be given a year-round plot at the University community garden by March as the spaces began to fill up very fast.  It was conveniently located close to the University of Washington where there was frequent bus service from our home.  I wanted to do gardening year round as many things–especially the hardy greens and the root crops–grow well during the winters in the Pacific Northwest and harvest fresh vegetables all year.

We didn’t need to start completely from nothing since they were already a few crops–beets, parsley, calendulas, Greek oregano, and tulips–in my pea patch.  I planted several of the traditional vegetables–carrots, chards, lettuce, and peas–from free seeds from the Seattle Pea Patch program.  I also transplanted several things such as cosmos, mints, sage, lemon balm, and tomatoes.

Shortly after I began to take care of a garden I learned about the edible weeds–chickweed, lamb quarters, dandelion, sheep sorrel, purslane, Sheppard’s purse, and sow thistle–which grow well in our climate.  One woman, who also had a pea patch in our community gardens, pointed out the chickweeds.  I should have eaten the good plants that I had pulled up.  I learned to identify most of the common edible weeds from books I had purchased.

Throughout the warmer months of the year when it tended to be dryer and there was more work to do at my garden I went to my pea patch twice a week after work plus Sundays straight from the University Friends Meeting.  Kris sometimes had helped me by picking up the steer manure fertilizer and watering the garden on the weekends whenever I was away.  Whenever we were both away on vacation for a week during the summer, we had people from our community garden water for us.  I generally was very meticulous about pulling out every little weed I saw since the plots were required to be kept up well. 

I received so much enjoyment from tending the garden.  Even though it was an added responsibility, it was a relaxing type of work.  This provided me with very meditative opportunities to commune with nature.  I was able to admire the beauty of the leaves, buds, flowers, insects, and butterflies.  I took delight in the patterns of the shapes, colors, textures, and the movements–all this with the bonus of reaping the harvests of fresh organically grown vegetables.

 

Even while I was in food service, I kept contact with the autism community.  The first project I became involved with was the Autism Task Force of about fifteen other members.  The group comprised of people from different backgrounds–professionals, parents, and individuals with autism.  We met about six times throughout 1986 through the analysis of where services were needed the most in the community.  There was a great need of services such as respite care, training in schools and businesses and employment opportunities.

A few years later in July of 1989, when the Autism Society of America had it’s annual conference in Seattle, I attended a few evening events and the two last sessions the final afternoon.  At the auction fund-raiser I purchased a few items.  Duane and Katie, former director of WPAS had tickets for Kris and me to attend the awards banquet that happened to take place on my thirty-second birthday.  Bessie, whom I had stayed with in White Center during the early eighties, sat next to us and drove us home.

The last session before the banquet was a panel on several personal perspectives on autism from service providers, parents, and an individual with the disability.  It was inspiring to hear people present their personal experiences.  This was a welcome addition to the conference that wasn’t included at the Boston one that I went to eight years earlier.

I met a few other adults with autism.  One short and slim woman, with an ebullient smile, was very excited to meet me as someone who could better able understands first hand her disability.  I was also very thrilled at meeting someone with autism who had done so well.  Kathy L. was a very bright young woman who had graduated from college in political science with a great interest in Soviet studies.  She was very articulate and focused very well on her main interest, Soviet or Russian culture.  She had a job and was able to support herself.  When she told me that her autism was the result of her mother contacting Rubella while she was pregnant, I was surprised as she was so different and much less disabled than Bea’s stepdaughter who had multiple disabilities from Rubella in uterus.

Kathy L. needed help in getting around Seattle to go sightseeing.  I was able take her around since I was free on that Saturday.  We went to the Seattle Center to go up the Space Needle and to the Bite of Seattle festival which coincided very well with our plans for lunch.  She just wanted pizza with which she was very familiar.  From there I took her to the Ballard Locks that didn’t interest her, unlike most tourists, who think is the main attraction of the area.  We walked by the Ballard sidewalk sale with a booth that sold a Scandinavian flag to her.  She collected flags of around the world.  Though I wasn’t a very good tour guide, it was a good opportunity to become more acquainted with each other.

During the late eighties, I was involved with some publicity on autism on television and newspapers.  On August 3, 1988, I appeared on a panel with two parents of children with autism on the Seattle Today Show on KING TV5.  I wore the business suit that I had made a few years earlier and walked to the TV studio since I was so close.  I presented myself very well as the format was of questions and answers which were very general and relatively easy to answer.  We had friends record a video for use to watch and to send to my mother.

 Several months later, Nancy Bartley, a staff reporter from the Seattle Times came to our place to interview me for an article on autism that was printed on January 5, 1989:

 

                                Deborah Thorsos is a trim, 31-year-old brunette, who when nervous speaks haltingly and twines her hair around her fingers.  She is married, a member of Toastmasters, a graduate of the University of Maryland, an avid gardener and hiker.

 

                                In a Capitol Hill condominium Deborah Thorsos, 31, reclines on a sofa in a living room banked with plants.  She is a success story.  Only 5 percent of autistic people are able to function at her level, Reichler said.

                                She didn’t learn to speak until she was 5.  She had difficulty understanding language and was prone to fits of anger during which she would throw books out the window.

                                She was sent to a school for developmentally handicapped children and began the slow steady progress that took her not only through high school but through the University of Maryland.  She graduated with a fine-arts degree and a minor in biology.

                                Four years ago, she married Kris Thorsos, 34, whom she met on the bus on the way to a party. After confirming that they were bound for the same address, Thorsos, who lost his sight after a childhood illness, told her: “I’ll show you the way.”

                                They say they’ve been an inseparable couple since.

                                Kris Thorsos works for the Social Security Administration, and Deborah works as a food-services clerk for Boeing’s Renton plant.

                                While some family members had initial hesitation when they decided to marry, they’ve since received both families’ support.  They also decided not to have children.

                                “I was afraid of passing down the tendency toward autism,” Deborah Thorsos said. “I would be afraid. It would be sad for the child to go through the same suffering I did.”

                                She recalls feelings of inferiority and incredible frustration at not being able to understand or communicate and the years it took to break through the invisible barrier that separated her from the rest of her world.

                                Autism’s traces linger in her sometimes halting speech, the slight nervous rocking and the winding of her dark hair through her fingers.

                                She has battled the obsessive/ compulsive behavior that often comes with autism and now is obsessed only with building her health.

                                She dabbles in astrology, Buddhism, meditation, healing with crystals and is happiest when working in her county-provided pea-patch garden or daydreaming, watching sea gulls pinwheel across the sky from her living-room window.

                                “There was something about her I can’t explain that turned me on to her,” her husband said from his office. “She’s very warm, very loving.  I remember thinking at the beginning it was a challenge, that by loving her things would work out.  And they did.”

A while after the article was out, an attractive middle-aged woman with a mild case of autism, from north of Seattle read about me in the newspaper and wrote me a letter with her phone number.  I called her and invited her to our place several times.  We had some common interests such as hiking and meditation.  She had worked with some people on self-hypnoses with use of self-guided imagery.  She did it to me for a few minutes during each visit.  As I was prone and relaxed, I described the meditative images of nature.  She didn’t charge me anything.  It was fun becoming acquainted with a reader with a similar type of disability.

 

A few times during the summer of 1989, the local of my food service union offered free to the union members seminars on Excellency that were recorded on videos.  I took the September class that met a total of four evenings during the week.  It was held at the Edgewater Inn with dinner included.  After we watched the videos we were given worksheets and had discussion with the black facilitator.  He shared his inspiring story of overcoming great challenges from being a troubled boy in Detroit with time spent in jail.  He turned his whole life around after taking the seminar on excellence and began conducting it.

The workshops were based on the premise that low self-esteem could result from negative programming into the subconscious that in turn could prevent us from rising above ourselves to achieve excellence or what we really want.  I had received negative input in my subconscious from many sources throughout my childhood which had affected me into my adulthood: “I’m autistic so therefore I’m not normal and can’t do some things as normal children could do and can’t always go to school with them.”

These negative messages, which become embedded in our being, adversely affect self-images of our bodies and our minds.  For example, for years I had seen myself as mostly a big organism with very large breasts and a big stomach.  Besides being slightly overweight, such attributes were greatly accentuated by poor posture.  I received encouragement and hope that if I released that image of myself and replaced it with an agile woman with good posture and a flat stomach, my goals would become more obtainable.

I was instructed to write down all of my goals and meditate on them just before I drifted off to sleep while in bed when the subconscious tend to be the most receptive.  It was no wonder why I had kept failing to modify some behaviors such as over eating as I kept clinging to the same negative patterns.  I was determined to change though it still wasn’t easy and it was a long slow process–like peeling many layers of a big onion.  This was helped by my meditation.  I vowed to overcome my eating disorder and gain control over food rather than letting it control me.

 

After my good friend, Dani, had surgery to remove her cancer from the abdominal area and stayed home, I called her frequently to offer her as much encouragement as possible with healing words.  She had radiation and chemotherapy since she had some spots that had spread to her spine that couldn’t be operated on.  She apparently had had the cancer for over five years.  I only was able to see her once during her illness since most of the time her immune system was too deficient for exposure to the outside world.  Despite her strong faith in religion and adaptation to the more healthful macrobiotic diet prescribed by a naturopath, she wasn’t able to fight the cancer and had passed away during the summer of 1989.  Though, I missed her, I felt that she would rest in peace and than be well taken care of.

 

During autumn of 1989 when Boeing mechanics, which made up the bulk of the workers, went on strike, I volunteered to stay home during the walkout after I was at work on the first day of it and saw how little there was to do.  I wanted to give my co-workers, who needed to work more than I, more of a chance especially as I knew that I would be out only temporarily.  I was ready for a vacation and thought it would be fun to stay home for a little while and catch up on some things.

During the first week I went on a long fast to detoxify my system.  I was highly motivated to improve my health and stamp out my eating disorder and grabbed at the opportunity to do so with the time off.  By the end of the week I felt very good, the best I ever had, and even lost some weight.  Not that thinness should be equated with health.  When I resumed eating I began to reduce going on binges.  I was on the road to recovery.

 

Since I had all the time off, I decided that it would be a good time to take a bus further out and attend Eastside Friends Meeting in Bellevue for a change.  I wanted to explore the area around it and I also wanted to become more acquainted with the people I met on the weekend retreats (quarterly meeting).

I made a very good friend there, who came from a highly educated family.  Terry R. was married with a twelve-year-old son and lived in Bellevue.  I told her about my background in autism and we hit it off very well.  We visited each other regularly and I met her mother who was an artist.  We also exchanged small gifts.  I was so happy to have met Terry that I had continued going to Eastside Friends even after I was back at work when the strike was settled.  I sometimes visited her when I had days off from food service.

 

About a month into the Boeings strike, I began to miss work with regular contact with people and the structure of the work.  Even though I kept mingling with friends at community activities, I felt a need to be with other people, besides my husband, at least a few times a week.  Though I had never got bored or ran out of things to do at home, I thrived on the structure of knowing what to do without thinking about it.  I lacked a solid plan for major projects and the self-discipline to get them accomplished which are required for working at home.  Besides, I needed the income from my job. 

When the mechanist strike was settled after eight weeks by the end of November, I was much more appreciative of my job when I returned to work even though there was less and less for me to do due to the restructuring of the plant.  I was happy to see my co-workers again and felt that they were glad to see me.

 

After I had filled in as the dish person for a month, during the winter of 1990, there was even less for me to do.  Often before lunch my duties would be completed and I had to scrounge for extra things to do.  This was actually more stressful to me than having too much to do.  I began to request that, like most other workers at the production center, I wanted to be sent out to different locations to work more directly with the customers.  I didn’t want to remain behind the scenes all the time as I advanced beyond complacency.

Luckily by end of March of 1990, which wasn’t too long after my request, I applied and was offered a cook’s helper position at the Garden Plaza (brand new office building on Park Avenue) with exactly the same hours as my old job.  I had been limited to what job openings I could take since I couldn’t start in the morning before seven that was required for most full-time jobs.

The change was very good since I was kept much busier with a more variety of tasks and different ones.  I had had my other position for seven years since my transfer to Renton.  Now I was responsible for preparing the side dishes–frozen vegetables, red potatoes, and rice–and cooking them in the steamer.  I also baked russet potatoes and prepared seasoning mixes for the entrees and soups.  As an added benefit to the more enjoyable position, though still very easy work I had received a hike in my pay scale since I moved up one notch into a higher job classification.

My prayer of working out in the front serving people directly was answered.  During the lunch service hours, I was assigned to serve on a hot food line where I was in direct contact with customers.  Apparently, the managers began to feel more comfortable to have me face the patrons and provide direct service as my more autistic facial and bodily expressions had gradually given way to a more outgoing look.  It was a good thing that I was finally trusted to do the job as I performed well with my cheerful spirit-of-service attitude of delivering whatever I could with the need to please the customers.  They all seemed happy with my service.  Most were very friendly.  My demeanor began to exude greater confidence though I still had long ways to go.

 

Since the autumn of 1989, Kris’ Social Security office moved from Seattle to a much larger facility about thirty miles south in an old, refurbished warehouse at the General Administrative Services at Auburn.  The teleservice center had increased capacity with a national toll-free number and needed more space with the expansion from about thirty employees to around six hundred.  Kris was very lucky to get a ride to the new location since only one woman offered to take him with no backup drivers as most of the worker refused the transfer and moved on.  He would still able to go by bus, but it was too long of a commute.

After commuting about half a year, even with a ride most of the time, Kris decided that we needed to move closer to the office for a shorter commute as it was wearing on him and he wasn’t able to always count on a ride.  During the spring of 1990, we began to look at condominiums and houses in the Kent and Auburn areas whenever we got rides from his parents and his friend Ray.

Initially we had viewed condos and townhouses since Kris wanted something with very low maintenance and we weren’t sure that we could afford a single-family house.  As he became more concerned about the higher fire hazards in condos with wood construction and we both longed for our own back yard, he reconsidered and focused our search for single detached homes with backyards.  We realized that we could always hire people for maintenance work when necessary.  As we approached summer, we focused our efforts in Auburn, close to the bus line with regular service so we could get around more easily.  But, we still looked close to where Kris worked.  We didn’t need to be as close to my job in Renton as I wouldn’t be working as many hours as Kris would be at his.

 

As I settled into my married life, which was very compatible, I went all over Seattle to visit various churches and temples.  I became very curious of what various faiths were like as I was searching my soul for a happier life.  I found that mantra meditation was very effective in making me calmer and focused for love, compassion, peace, and forgiveness.  I worked on reprogramming my negative karma into a positive with improving my self-image that was a very slow process.  I experimented with a few diets and fasting to clean out my system and improve my health.  I took up gardening for a greater communion with nature and fresh organic produce.

“How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are doves.  Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead.”—Song of Songs 4:1