Her neighbor Cathleen Caffrey, an 80-year-old resident of another senior mobile home park in Santa Rosa, California, recently celebrated her big birthday. Here’s how she commemorated the occasion in a fashion she never dreamed possible. Shame and social stigma drove Caffrey to grapple with feelings of unworthiness and isolation for much of her life. Once she learned that she was autistic, Melanie felt rescue and clarity for the first time. This unexpected discovery turned her entire world upside down, and for the first time in her life, she was able to open her heart to happiness.
Caffrey was forced to retire in her mid-50s due to repetitive strain injuries. This inadvertently locked her into years of immobility. She remembers being stuck flat on her back for sometimes 12 hours a day, bingeing TV. It was a tough time for her personally as she wrestled with feelings of inadequacy. Mostly, she thought she was just “a bad person,” somebody who didn’t deserve to be loved or have friends.
Her youth in California, despite having loving and supportive parents, was characterized by deep-seated shyness and alienation from the rest of her schoolmates. Caffrey sharply recalls isolating himself in order to read during recess when his peers were making friends. When she was just 10 years old, her parents divorced. That’s exactly when she began to hear a voice in her head telling her, “Nothing’s ever gonna work.” This internal struggle persisted throughout her life.
Caffrey later found some relief from Alcoholics Anonymous in her 30s. She has continued sobriety for 42 years as the addiction running through her family finally began to make sense. She continued to struggle against depression and the struggle to build any kind of deep interpersonal connection. “I was never able to find a relationship that worked for me,” she remarked, reflecting on the pain of failed connections that felt like “another kind of addiction.”
Until then, it hadn’t crossed their minds that Caffrey might be autistic until they discovered the concept of autism while Googling one day. She went home and watched videos of other people’s stories and saw herself in their reflections. “One day, the word ‘autism’ caught my eye… I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is me. This is me to a T,’” she shared. Through all this, we echoed each other’s experiences with ADHD, which gave her a greater understanding of her lifelong challenges and how they influenced her relationships with others.
“It was such an incredible relief to find out that what I’d always assumed was me being a bad person was just me not having understood the way I related to people.” – Cathleen Caffrey
Caffrey’s runaway birthday celebration planned by her brother and his partner addressed all of those things and became a pivotal moment in her life. She was amazed that they had close to 60 people come out to the kickoff party. This was daunting, given the 10 she had come prepared to woo! I was like that’s not real,’ she said, elated by the memory of it all, ‘it was [the] best moment of my life.
Now that Caffrey is looking back on her life, she describes a change in what she focused on and wanted. “I’m no longer driven by wanting money, a specific relationship, or acknowledgment for achievements,” she explained. Instead, she works on finding peace within herself and cultivating that peace in her interactions with her husband, two children and dog.
“I spent quite a few years thinking I looked like the Elephant Man,” Caffrey candidly recalled, highlighting the depth of her struggles with self-image.
Despite the challenges she faced throughout her life, Caffrey now describes herself as “more or less quietly happy a lot of the time.” While her journey toward self-acceptance is far from over, Shuva has walked into this new chapter with self-acceptance, confidence, and understanding.