Yuman Carol Engler share experiences of special needs in her new book
Nine years after the death of her son Aaron in an automobile accident, Carol Engler has written a book about the struggles she shared with him in his battle to overcome Tourette Syndrome and other disorders.
What may take readers by surprise is the irreverent, jocular tone Engler infuses in places in “Aaron’s Story, One Wrong Turn.”
Engler would like to be thought of as “Erma Bombeck of mental health.” Bombeck was a humorist who penned bestsellers and thousands of newspaper columns about the light side of family life in the suburbs.
Humor, says Engler, is what helped her through the hardest moments of Aaron’s battles and move beyond his passing.
There’s another underlying message in her book for parents.
Never, ever give up on your kids. “Aaron’s Story, One Wrong Turn” was published in January by Austin Macauley Publishers in January, and Engler will be at Yuma’s Barnes & Noble store, 819 W. 32nd St., on Sunday, April 25, from noon to 3 p.m.
“I absolutely intend to speak and, more specifically, answer individual questions from the audience,” Engler said.
Engler says she will also speak and take questions from the audience.
As a child, she writes, Aaron exhibited symptoms of what turned out to be Tourette Syndrome, a disorder characterized by involuntary movements and uncontrollable or hard-tocontrol vocal sounds, or tics. Later he was diagnosed with associated conditions – attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome.
Engler sent Aaron to different psychiatrists and residential treatment centers, she writes, as she clashed with her then-husband, the late Yuma attorney Don Engler, over the nature of his mental illness and his need for care. Her husband, she says, was “in denial.”
Juggling her schedule as a real estate agent, Engler traveled out of town to seminars and called the experts to educate herself about TS and neurological and mental disorders. She served as head of a TS support group for those whose loved ones suffered the illness.
Then in the aftermath of Aaron’s death, she was moved to draw on her experience as a former newspaper reporter to write the book.
“I have been doing advocacy for other families over the past years, both when Aaron was alive and even now,” Engler said. “I realized how many of these families were dealing with the same angst I was going through. I wanted to get the word out there that what they were experiencing was the ‘new normal’ for their family.”
She says she wants the families to know “they are not alone on this journey.” She also wants them to know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
“Never give up on your children – you are their only true advocate, and, it’s unfortunate to say, but it’s you and them against the rest of the world. I stopped listening to all the experts and started to understand what my son was truly telling me – what was actually going on in his brain and body.”
And speaking one on one with other parents who have children struggling with the same issues “gives one the greatest insight into what does and doesn’t work,” she said.
“Every journey is its own and no two journeys are the same. You need to be able to pick and choose what will and will not work for you and your child.”
Her son was killed April 2012 in an accident referenced in the title of the book as the “One Wrong Turn.”
“Aaron died instantly just outside my house when he slammed into a light post at County 14th Street and Avenue A,” Engler said. “Several years later, we were in Montreal, Canada, with some friends and took a wrong turn on the freeway. It was a very long stretch before we could get back on the road we needed to be on. All of a sudden, a light bulb went off in my head – we took a very wrong turn and so did Aaron. I drew an analogy between the two, thinking about the unforeseen consequences and, in Aaron’s case, the profound trauma that can often be involved in such common and innocent, everyday mistakes.”
Engler says people who have read the book have told her it made them laugh as well as cry. And that was the intent.
“Humor is the only thing that got me through.”
“Aaron’s Story, One Wrong Turn” is available for purchase at Barnes & Noble, The Redondo Room at the Garden Cafe, 250 S. Madison Ave., and on Amazon.com.