496 days.
70 weeks.
16 months.

That is how long my youngest has been on homebound instruction. Away from a brick-and-mortar school building. It is nearly the same amount of time he was out of school during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The difference is that back then, we were all experiencing it together. The isolation, the monotony, the upheaval of daily life. This time, it was just him.

But today, all of that changes.

Today, he goes back to school.
Today, he walks into a brick-and-mortar building filled with people: adults, children, movement, noise, and life.

When we made the decision 496 days ago to move to homebound instruction, it was not a choice we made lightly. It was a response to how adults reacted and failed to respond. We did it for safety, for well-being, and most importantly, to protect our son. What we did not know then was how long this journey would last, or how deeply it would change us.

The mental, physical, and emotional toll on our family has been nothing short of significant. But the greatest toll has been on our child.

This path led us into community-based services, the DD waiver process, multiple partial hospitalization programs, emergency room visits, and inpatient hospitalizations. Any one of those systems is overwhelming for a family to navigate. We were navigating several at once; while still advocating, relentlessly, for our child’s right to access in-person learning.

Our son is medically complex. He lives with autism, significant anxiety, ADHD, and more. He also presents with a Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile. To be honest, he is not an easy child to understand or to support. But on the darkest days…when the struggle feels so heavy it overwhelms us, I have to remember that as hard as this is for me, it is infinitely harder for him.

I will never know if the decisions I made were the “right” ones. I will never know what might have happened had we sent him back into a school environment with staff we no longer trusted. What I do know is this: even when I am exhausted and want to give up, even when I am deeply frustrated with the life we are living and want to throw in the towel, I don’t. And he sees that. He learns from that.

I believe that one day, my son will be successful in his own right. He will build a life he can be proud of. I know this because perseverance has been modeled for him. Not through words, but through action. So today, he embarks on a new journey. One that will bring challenges and struggles. And my hope is that along the way, he has learned that challenges do not mean we give up. They do not mean we stop. They mean we continue to grow, to learn.

They mean we keep going.
Not because it is easy.
Not because we are certain.
But because growth lives on the other side of fear.

Today is not an ending. It is the beginning. One step forward into uncertainty, into challenge, into possibility. And while I cannot promise that this path will be smooth, I can promise this: he will not walk it alone.

Today, he returns to school.
And today, we choose hope. Not because the road has been kind, but because he is worth it.