Abbey's Mom
speaker
177 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Abbey's Mom’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
In Love on the Spectrum, season one, they're interviewing me and they said, what is your fear for Abby's future?
And I said, my fear is that the world will be mean to her and hurt her when I'm gone.
Yeah. It was really an amazing thing. She DM'd Abby. So we got Abby's reaction to the DM from Jodi Benson.
And it was one of the most amazing moments for me as her mom that like this is even happening for decades. Jodi Benson, Jodi Benson, Ariel. And then we're having dinner with her at the Grove.
Yes, and she's absolutely ethereal, iconic, and lovely, and sweet, and an amazing mother. She has two kids. Her story is just beautiful. So, so sweet and kind. And they actually sang a couple of bars of Ariel together. No. Yes, at the Grove. Abby, that's incredible.
She just does it for fun, and she happens to know Abby, and she's very talented and patient, and she has worked with Abby on a couple songs to get the feelings, the imagery onto the paper, the words, and then they kind of do it together. It's been amazing to watch the process. That is so fun.
And it's always been about the love of music. It's never been about wanting to be touring the U.S., although if anyone wants to know, but it's just about the love of music because, Abby, why don't you tell everybody about how you could sing before you could talk? I could sing before I could talk.
I am in a theater right now called Epic Players. That's cool. She's in a neurodivergent theater company. And I have used theater as a therapeutic intervention since day one. And I did some acting stuff back in college and back in the day when I, you know, all that stuff. But I used the principles of acting to practice social skills. And I started doing it right when she was four. Wow. Yep.
Right in the moment, right when it happens. Okay, let's try that again. This time we're going to say, hi, my name is Abby. What's your name? Like when she was, you know, like four and didn't know social cues.
So I'm a big advocate of anyone with social skills to practice and have a safe environment to be able to enhance their self-confidence and just have a little bit more of that I'm in control instead of the variables of unstructured language, which can be really hard for some people.
That's so cool. When she was 12, she had this moment where, look, language was really hard because I didn't know what she was feeling. I didn't know what she was thinking. I didn't know what was happening. So you have to be like a detective. It's very difficult from the caregiver point of view because they're not able to really express like, I don't like school because blank. You just don't know.
But one day she was sitting on her bed. She was 12 and she was very frustrated. And she was just in a self-awareness moment. And she just turned to me and said, my stupid brain, why won't it do what I'm telling it to do? And she went, my stupid brain. And then she said, I just want to take it out and give it to someone else and take a typical kid's brain and put it in my head.
And then I said, why are you so angry? And she said, because I want what typical kids have.
some things that were really stupid like me if i was like the funny mom the first graders would like me more and then therefore they'd like her more like i was like acting like i mean there were moments of like that like in the lineup on the play yard when she was in the typical school like i'd be all like cool like to help bridge how she was interpreted it's like fail that didn't work yeah
First graders are not going to respond to that crazy mother over there. I think she's cool because she's dancing on the play yard. You know what I mean? Like I did that. I did therapies. I did interventions. I went to every conference and seminar that I could to learn more about this. So I've seen some of the autism greats over my lifetime. Because I went everywhere.
Temple Grandin is one of the most famous people with autism. I went to her seminars when Abby was four. I have a book from Temple Grandin that says, Signed to Abby, which I have as one of my archival, that's one of my family heirlooms. But I said to myself back then, what did her mother do? And I found that her mother, Eustacia Cutler, was speaking at some conference. So I ran to that conference.
It wasn't even that many people. It was like 50 people in a room, which was insane because these conferences have thousands. And met her, listened to her, took notes. I have a book from Eustacia Cutler signed to Christine. Wow. So I've got the book from Temple to her and the mother's book signed to me. And then I went to Chico State University and I got to do a speech and talk to their community.
And I brought my book. From Temple to show those people in the audience that I was them at one point, sitting in the audience just trying to figure this stuff out. And I talked about the mother. I held that book up. And then Temple Grandin, who was the afternoon keynote speaker of the same event, stood up and was in my speaking engagement.
She was? And I didn't know she was going to be there listening to me. And you're like, I have to. So I was like, okay, I can retire now. I can go to heaven. Like my life is made. Whatever the universe has in store for me. Like that moment was truly, it just made me want to say believe in dreams. Believe in your hope. Focus on the positive. Because if that could happen.
I can't wait to win the lottery. I know.
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