Daughter Letter 4
To the Daughter I Am,
You don’t need to worry so much about loving your mother. It was never your job to do.
Nor was it your job to make it seem as though she could love you.
I am so sorry, sweetheart.
You deserved to be loved.
Look at you.
You, who survived annihilation with your soul intact.
You, who broke from reality, betting all your faith on your ability to survive it, and who found your long way back by refusing to believe the lie.
I offer my truth as an expression of my love.
I am AuDHD and have been shamed my whole life for how I communicate.
I now understand that being direct and telling the truth
is not inherently unkind.
It is a profound expression of love.
I share my truth here in the hope that it helps.
This page tells the truth about trauma —
including harm done to an Autistic child, and child sexual abuse and incest.
Some parts of this page may feel heavy or intense.
Please care for yourself as you move through it.
Staying doesn’t mean never leaving.
Leave as often as you need to. Return only if and when you want to.
I’ve shared the work of others
whose wisdom, labor, and generosity guided and sustained me.
I’ve also included many of the ways I regulate, orient, and stay present —
music, beauty, sensory experience, humor, art, and love.
Please use whatever best supports you.
Please do not see me at the expense of yourself.
What am I leaving?
1. II of Wands, Wild Unknown
2. I Existence, Osho Zen
What is emerging?
3. 7 of Wands, Light Seer’s
4. 6 of Pentacles, Shadowscapes
Where can I look for resource?
5. 444 Service, Rainbow Warrior
Statement Read at Appeal Hearing
I read this statement at an appeal hearing before the local school board. School and district staff and administrators were present, and my daughter sat beside me.
I was surprised by how violently I shook.
A few days later, after an awful phone call with representatives of the Washington State Human Rights Commission—a call that shattered any remaining hope I had of finding care or support for my child’s experience within an institution—I stood on the sidewalk with my kid and our dog, bent over sobbing. We had been on a routine evening walk when I suddenly asked her to wait. I folded in half and burst into tears. My kid wrapped her arms around me and we held each other for a few minutes while I cried.
Once we started walking again, I asked my 8-year-old, “Is there anything you need from this process that you haven’t gotten yet?”
It had been seven months since we withdrew her from school and I filed a formal complaint against her school and district for disability discrimination.
She said, “No. The only person I needed to believe me is you, and you believe me now. And I know I never, ever, ever, ever, ever have to go back to that school again. I’m safe.”
Then she said, “Now all I want is for you to stop hurting.”
That night, I decided to stop fighting within a system that refused to see us and began imagining how I might offer my labor and understanding to people who are open to hearing me.
Since then, the school district has taken no further action to address my complaint.
Meanwhile, I’ve heard many stories of other Autistic children suffering at school.
I offer these words and our experience to any parents or caregivers of masked Autistic children in school or leaving school, to educators who want to better understand these children’s suffering, and to masked Autistic adults who endured the school system and bore the cost.
I see you. I hope this helps.
Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change and Building a Disability-Inclusive World
By Tiffany Yu
The Anti-Ableist Manifesto
Unmasking Autism
Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
By Devon Price
Is This Autism?
A Guide for Clinicians & Everyone Else
By Donna Henderson & Sarah Wayland with Jamell White
The Softest Octopus
…to rub on my face.
Paper Lantern Lights
…to stare at.
I wrote this introductory letter fueled by rage. It became the opening to a 100+ page formal disability discrimination complaint I filed with my daughter’s school district in 2025.
I made a deliberate decision not to mask my rage in the 3-page introductory letter, for better or worse.
The remainder of the complaint consisted of an emotionally neutral timeline covering my child’s 2½ years in school, along with an appendix of supporting documentation. If they didn’t want to receive such a detailed, thorough, and well-organized complaint, they should not have pissed off an Autistic mother.
I offer it to our Autistic community in the hope that it helps even one person.
Formal Complaint of Disability Discrimination
7. 4 of Swords, Light Seer’s
8. Page of Pentacles, Shadowscapes
9. 3 of Fire/Experiencing, Osho Zen
10. 4 Wisdom Action, Rainbow Warrior
11. Mother of Wands, Wild Unknown
Am I Safe Now?
1. King of Cups, Light Seer’s
2. Seven of Wands, Shadowscapes
3. XVII The Star, Wild Unknown
4. 10 of Rainbows/We Are The World, Osho Zen
5. Ace of Rainbows/Maturity, Osho Zen
6. 2 Creative/Belly, Rainbow Warrior
Will I Get What I Desire?
I woke early one morning in 2025, and it was as though a veil had lifted. I could suddenly see with astonishing clarity that the crisis point my daughter had reached that fall—and the unraveling of her wellbeing and capacity to function in the months that followed—was the direct result of Autistic burnout caused by elementary school.
I became enraged.
The email I sent to her school and district that day started a cascade of events that led us here. My daughter has been outside the traditional school system for over a year and she is thriving.
I am now even more certain of what I argued in 2025: that the relentless toll of masking in an inhospitable, discriminatory environment traumatized my child, wrecked her physical health, and left her wanting to die.
I witnessed how easy it was for her to bloom again in the absence of that environment. My daughter is alive and vibrant, happier and more herself than ever before. Not so coincidentally, her reading has improved too.
I am painfully aware that not every Autistic child can leave school. For many families, that simply isn’t an available option. We are privileged and fortunate.
I offer this in honor of what we’ve been through, where we’ve gotten, and all the labor it took to make her safe again. If it helps anyone else, it’s a bonus. It already saved us.
An Email I Sent the School and District
“Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.”
Kiya’s Meltdown, A Children’s Story
Content Note: Depicts self-injury during Autistic meltdown.
Story by Stacey and Wren (8 years old). Drawing by Wren. Shared with consent.
Right now, Kiya is at first recess, lifting single drops of dew off the grey metal monkey bars with her index finger before sucking them into her mouth. The playground is a loud cacophony of too much noise and too many kids, but here, counting dew drops, Kiya can quiet the world a little. She doesn’t always mind being alone.
Kiya looks over to where her best-friend Bea is swinging with another girl, and a sharp poke of jealousy stabs her chest. Kiya loves the swings. Swinging is one of her very favorite sensations (right up there with bouncing and spinning). But in this moment hiding feels more important to Kiya than swinging.
Kiya was playing with her friends when first recess started, but they didn’t listen to her ideas, and she got mad. Like swinging, Kiya loves inventing games, but she hates when the people she’s playing with change the rules she’s created, and they almost always change the rules. When Kiya tried telling Bea how she felt, Bea got mad at Kiya for being mad at Bea—which Kiya still can’t understand—and she fled to the monkey bars.
As Kiya sucks her finger into her mouth again, her stomach twists and lurches, and Kiya feels a slight breeze stir inside her chest. Sometimes, Kiya hates being alone.
Love Letter 25: Exile, Despair Love
Darling [Recipient’s Name],
You are loved far out beyond what you can think and feel. It will surprise you in the wildest, most wondrous places.
That part of you who others will surely look down on for how unskillful, unenlightened, and much further behind she is. The part who has too big feelings far too frequently. The messiest, ugliest, and meanest parts. The ones with so many desperate needs. The part who says, “No.” The one who asks for exactly what she wants and doesn’t feel ashamed. The part of you perpetually afraid she’s not enough of what They want.
Wherever the hurt is most exquisitely tender. Where the tears threaten to never stop. Where it feels like agony. Out where you wail, and out past that where you rage.
To listen:
Past
1. Mother of Swords, Wild Unknown
2. Father of Wands, Wild Unknown
3. Ace of Wands, Light Seer’s
4. IX Aloneness, Osho Zen
5. Nine of Wands, Shadowscapes
Present
Ancestral Message & Resource
6. 11 Balance, Rainbow Warrior
7. 7 United/Crown, Rainbow Warrior
8. 20 Judgment, Light Seer’s
9. 4 of Rainbows/The Miser, Osho Zen
10. VI The Lovers, Shadowscapes
Future
Content note: This text contains references to child sexual abuse and incest.
I have only ever wanted one thing in life—to get exactly to where I am. I wanted so badly to live before I died.
It has not been easy.
For me to live, I had to heal.
For me to heal, I had to remember.
For me to remember, I had to stay present with my own terror.
I had to be willing to believe my body above all of the lies.
I share the email I sent my family a few years ago in honor of everything it took for me to be able to send it, and to celebrate the life that has unfolded since. Every second was worthwhile.
I offer it to anyone living with incest and child sexual abuse who is not yet safe to speak.
An Email I Sent My Family
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
Telling the Truth to the Child I Was
Content note: This text contains references to child sexual assault and incest.
I don’t have visual memories (mental pictures) of all the trauma I experienced in childhood. This is common among incest and child sexual assault survivors.
What I have are body memories and a whole lot of symptoms.
It took me a very long time, and intense, dedicated work to be able to believe my body over the story my family tells.
My therapist—who I stopped working with when she retired—once told me she’d never known anyone to work as hard at healing as I do. It wasn’t a compliment. She was trying to help me rest.
What neither she nor I seemed to fully understand back then is that I was still in a fight for my life. I hadn’t survived what was done to me yet. What was done to me didn’t stop at sexual assault. The sexual abuse I experienced in childhood was denied so completely, even I wasn’t allowed to know it happened.
The erasure of my trauma cost me more across the rest of my life than the trauma itself.
I could not exist in a delusional reality.
I exist here—in a life that is finally true.
This trauma narrative represents the last piece of work I did with my therapist before I stopped seeing her. It was inspired by what I know about using EMDR with kids, years of IFS therapy, and a prayer to my ancestors that they answered immediately.
I offer it to my fellow survivors, especially those of you who are still fighting to be real. If it resonates with you, please take the idea to your own therapist.
What My Bones Know
A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
By Stephanie Foo
Trauma and Recovery
The Aftermath of Violence — From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
By Judith L. Herman, MD
Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves - And How to Find Our Way Back
By Dr. Ingrid Clayton
Fawning
1. 7 of Swords, Light Seer’s
2. XVII The Star, Shadowscapes
3. I Existence, Osho Zen
4. V of Pentacles, Wild Unknown
5. 3 Powerful/Sun, Rainbow Warrior
Reflect Me
My Sweet [Recipient’s Name],
I wish I was there right now, sitting in front of you, gazing back softly. My smile would widen tenderly like a bud unfurling. We could be in the quiet together.
I might start to cry, my love for you cracking my heart wide open.
I would ask to hold both of your hands in mine. We could sit knee to knee and hand in hand, breathing the same air. It would be as if a prayer came to life.
I would tell you the million things that make you incredible to me.
I would use the whole of my being to reflect back to you how gorgeous and magnificent you are.
My words could wash away all the doubts you have that you are anything less than perfectly beloved.
I would say, if you needed me to, that you will always be okay. Always.
Love Letter 27: Tenderness, Devotion, Presence
To listen:
Some of What I Know
Content note: This text contains references to child sexual assault and incest.
For most of my life, I did not know what I had lived through. I survived inside a delusion that I could be safe and loved with abusive people. When I finally saw the delusion I’d lived inside for my entire life, it was like a dome cracking open inside my mind. I likened it to how Truman must have felt when he looked to the sky and saw floodlights and metal framing.
I have had to excavate the truth of my own life from inside my body. It has taught me so much. I continue to learn every day.
“And who will I be when everything changes?
Yeah, said fear, who will you be?”
1. VI of Pentacles, Wild Unknown
2. XII New Vision, Osho Zen
3. Queen of Swords, Light Seer’s
4. XIII Death, Shadowscapes
5. 23 Rainbow Warrior, Rainbow Warrior
I Receive
Hi sweet girl,
You are right that a lot of people do not understand you. That is painful, and it is not your fault.
Even I—your mama, who loves you so freakin’ much—sometimes don’t understand you. I know that can hurt you. I am learning how to be your mom by being your mom, and that can be hard for both of us.
You are less disguised than most of the grown-ups in your life. You haven’t learned to hide as much of yourself as we did.
Because you don’t hide all of what we were taught to hide, we blame you. We sometimes treat you like you are bad or wrong—like you should hide those parts too and be more like who we have had to be. We have made you feel small and scared. You have noticed this. This is why you feel like you are bad and wrong.
But we are the ones who are wrong, my darling.
Daughter Letter 2
“Help me receive the love and life that is already here for me.”
— One of My Prayers
1. 17 Grace, Rainbow Warrior
2. VI The Lovers, Osho Zen
3. II of Cups, Wild Unknown
4. Queen of Swords, Light Seer’s
5. 2 of Wands, Shadowscapes
6. 3 The Empress, Light Seer’s
7. 7 Mastery, Rainbow Warrior
8. 5 Nurturing/Southeast, Rainbow Warrior
9. 3 Powerful/Sun, Rainbow Warrior
Show Me to Me
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
By Sangu Mandanna
The Gilded Ones
By Namina Forna
Legendborn
By Tracy Dean
For her.
May my healing bring you peace.
All of my love,
Stacey
Stay longer and See more on YouTube: @stayseeproject
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© 2026 Stacey Plate. All rights reserved.
With love and gratitude to Megan Kruse for her incredible editorial support and belief in this work.
All sticker art by the brilliant therebelsociety on Etsy.