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The Prayerie - My Safe Autistic Elopement Space, Lees Summit, MO (2026)

10/06/2026

My story and what it has to do with my plan to build a safe and sensory friendly studio in my beautiful native wildflower prairie cove...

One of these pictures is at the Armed Forces School of Music basic music course, which at that time was the Army Band AIT (the advanced training following initial basic training). The picture of me with the cymbals is at a ceremonial band performance where bassoons don't typically perform, and the more formal looking picture is when I honored my dad at his funeral by arranging "How Firm a Foundation" for bassoon and organ and performing it with my sister, Sheri, as organist.

At one point, these pictures represented the greatest accomplishments of my life (other than husband and father accomplishments), but they eventually became a source of great pain, confusion, and existential crisis. Part of the conflict and crisis had to do with unaddressed and unacknowledged hidden disabilities that caused my career to come crashing down. Even now, it's difficult for me to call a disability a disability—SAY THE WORD!—but my needs are never fully met without completely identifying, among other things, as a disabled autistic adult.

When I began kindergarten in 1980, autism spectrum diagnoses were only for the most classic cases where kids didn't mask enough to hide their differences—maskers at least hid their differences enough to be called "weird" but nothing else. For kids who were excellent maskers, their challenges in school, home, and social life were mysteries. They were seen as, weird, needing discipline, or their problems blamed on abuse, poverty, or poor parenting.

In my case, psychologists gave a lot of attention to my 8 other siblings and chaotic home life, only to realize that I had great parents and a loving family, but they had no other explanations why I never turned in my homework, why I was reclusive and avoidant at school, why I didn't take showers even as a bed wetter, and why I stayed home sick all the time.

My first year of junior high school was full of relentless bullying because I was obviously different from others. "T**d" (or the full word) and "lurpy" were my most common descriptors from others. ("Lurpy" was local slang for out of place, awkward, or clumsy.)

We moved to Utah for my 8th grade year. The kids in Utah were way nicer to me than Colorado kids, but I was still lost and stressed to the max in a sea of kids and stimulation. I couldn't catch a break in school because I knew all the homework and test answers, but I was too exhausted to complete all of it. My IQ was up there with the high achievers, but my ability to show it to others was nonexistent. Music and running were the only areas where I could stand out. Except, long track meets and hundreds of kids overloaded me, so I had to quit the track team.

So, music it was! Because socializing was so difficult, and other school subjects caused frustration and depression, music was my refuge. It saved me during much heartache.

However, music can't fix everything. After high school, the same issues showed up as dropping out of college due to overwhelm, jobs only lasting a day, a month, or a year at the longest, and having two failed marriages in less than 10 years.

I finally schemed that I might literally have a shot at life by auditioning for the Army Band so that the structure, discipline, and music (doing what I love), would help keep me going. It felt so good to have a career doing what I loved more than anything, but little did I know that it was never going to last more than 10 years because I had never fully addressed the unexplained reasons why everything was so difficult for me. Although 10 years of job longevity was an amazing success for me (and I even rode that wave to earn an MFA in film music composing/production while serving in the Army), it was all I could do until I was completely burned out. I'm not just talking about common career burnout. I didn't know about autism, but it was autistic burnout, in hindsight. I couldn't do anything. I was just a bump on a log unable to do anything at home or at work, and it came with major depression, anxiety, meltdowns, abrupt mood swings.

When I left that career, playing my bassoon became a triggering source of pain and depression. I felt completely useless. I did find a low-key job with minimal socialization and minimal supervision, which has helped me stay there for 11 years, but even this job is becoming too much to handle.

At near age 52, I'm now preparing to retire early and try my own part-time music composing, production, and teaching business. Part-time seems to be all I can handle at any career without falling apart. My wonderful wife is planning to jump back into the workforce to help make ends meet. (Bless her!)

At this turning point, I find myself worried about so many things. I've been unable to compose music because my brain doesn't do desk work without complete isolation, which is impossible to have at home. How can I even do music part-time without a dedicated isolated space? In answer to that problem, I'm planning to build a stand-alone studio on our property next to my beautiful native wildflower prairie cove, which I think will really help. I'm excited!

Another problem—how can I have film music clients when social interactions are so taxing to me, and deadlines are not something I've ever been able to keep? Teaching lessons, too—I love teaching and paying it forward, but how can I manage the socialization and still be okay during my down time? I think my studio build plans will help this, too. Less environmental or uncontrolled stimulation and less chaos means more mental resources.

However, all I know for sure is that I'm starting a hobby studio, and it may always only be a hobby studio, but I have to always try to make it the best it can be. Aside from my God and my family, music is my life. For the first time, I'm doing this in a way that I'm owning my disability and accommodating it. We don't live in a world that offers these types of accommodations in the music industry or in most industries. Even in music education, I had to find that rare fully online slow paced degree program. So I'm creating my own parameters and accommodating myself for the next chapter of my life.

I look at these pictures and see a mixed bag of potential, naivety, and tragedy. However, I also see learning and experience without which I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't have nearly the appreciation for what I still have, and I wouldn't have nearly the empathy and compassion for others. I wouldn't have the strong desire to show young neurodivergent musicians how to learn music neuroaffirmingly, and how to navigate music and live in this hyper-intense world.

The world is bright; even for this struggling man in his 50s. I have so much hope that something beautiful will come of this next chapter. Hope is pretty much all I have right now. I've always had hope and I always will!

09/30/2026

Fall flowers. Not in order: Round-Headed Bush Clover, Indian Grass, Narrow-leafed Gumweed, Old Field Goldenrod, Blue Sage. Frost Aster. The bright red spiny-edged leaves are what Foxglove Beardtongue looks like in the fall, and the copper pea pods are Partridge peas.

09/23/2026

I'd be delighted for you to watch this and realize that a safe sensory friendly and stimulating music studio isn't just important for many autistic musicians. It's a necessity. Please watch while I share about my vision for my studio while also showing you the inspiring beautiful prairie, wildflowers, and forest where I'll build my lifeblood of a studio. Bear with me when I talk about things that bring me joy, and I'll get to the point about the studio towards the end of the video. I can't help it, I love wildflowers. 🤣

09/15/2026

Wildflowers to decompress and process. Today's wildflower walkabout. Very late summer/almost fall look. Beautiful coppers, goldenrod, frost aster, gumweed, sweet coneflower. 🙌

09/14/2026

Quick fall wildflower tour. Various Goldenrod species, Indian Grass, Spiny Toothed Gumweed (forgot the name when I was talking), Frost Aster, Tall Boneset, Black Eyed Susan, Brown Eyed Susan, Western Sunflower, Blue Sage.

08/23/2026

A beautiful day with comfortable weather at The Prayerie. New flowers popping up. Large-Flowered Guara (Oenothera filiformis) making a rare grand display today. You need just the right weather or time of day to see these delicate blossoms in full bloom.

08/21/2026

I call this set "Shifting Focus". These pictures I recently took are of the same two flowers. A Blue Sage (Salvia azurea) and a Rosinweed Sunflower (Helianthus silphioides). The sunflower is behind the sage in both pictures. Yet, it appears to be in the foreground when the focus is on it. Autistic monotropic/bottom-up thinking. This is how I experience the world.

08/20/2026

Remember to Breathe
————

My timeline between 1999 and 2005 is a huge blur. Marriage to my high school girlfriend from Japan at age 19 (Spring 1994), becoming a father at age 21, moving to Japan shortly after, and then seeing my world fall apart...Too much change. Too much maladjustment. Too much criticism for things I had no control over (such as being myself). I knew I was different than most people in America and I was pretty much out of control because of it. Throwing a new country into the mix really messed things up.

Divorce at age 24. I was too different. That's the only reason I've ever been able to come up with. My child was kept from me overseas for 11 years—partly due to poverty and no means to travel, and partly due to the severed side of the family's unwillingness.

Engagement at age 26—Spring 2001. Whirlwind romance. I rode a huge wave. Engagement called off by my then fiancée by late summer the same year. When I focused on something, I went all the way. When that focus hit a brick wall, I had little to save me—at least not back then. I remember running back and forth from wall to wall in the apartment. Having self-harmful thoughts simply so I could stop the out-of-control racing mind, mania, and panic, and not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted the overwhelm to stop.

I remembered something from my past—I remembered to breathe. Several layers beneath the hypercharged nervous system was my rationale. That side of me calmly called for help—albeit with a few sobs and sniffles. After that call came a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with rapid cycling.

My mom had a history of rejecting the most invasive forms of medicine in favor of more holistic means to successfully battle her cancer. I looked up to her because of her success and her faith in God to achieve it, and I had the same attitude. I wasn't going to take medications.

(In hindsight, bipolar disorder and cancer are not the same thing, and I ought to have independently weighed the risks and benefits. However, I wasn't experienced enough to know, and what works for one person may not work for me because we're all unique despite our similarities. So I did my best to improvise and discover.)

A recovery spent living with my parents gave me enough footing (after a few hiccups) to rethink my life and to start slowly. I tried all kinds of things with my counselor/therapist to see what would work for me to get through my education, new relationships, and life. One thing was to take it slowly. Self-hypnosis-like techniques for sleep were also helpful, but the main thing was the most simple: remember to breathe! I had already done it. I just needed to focus more on it and apply it to all areas of my life. Slow focused breathing when anxiety and depression got out of hand. 8 seconds in—12 seconds out.

It's no accident that breathing spoke so deeply to me. Focused breathing had gotten me out of trouble several times in my childhood, and it even gave me success in music and sports.

Breathing in childhood: I was clumsy in youth (still am) and horrible at sports, but I could run like nobody else. I outran any bully that ever threatened me. I had intense singular focus on whatever I was doing, and running lent itself well to that type of focus.

Being a natural musician, I locked into the rhythm of my breaths and steps—focusing on smooth consistency and rolling rather than pounding and force. I could picture it like measured legato in music. Every breath and step had a subdivision and a precise measurement in my brain. There was a precise number of strides per breath. When the breathing became more difficult, I increased the quality of my breathing, kept my breaths the same length but deeper, and I kept the tempo the same. I became accustomed to prioritizing focus on tempo and consistency rather than pain and discomfort.

In neighborhood football, kids learned to hand me the ball and let me run. I was the secret weapon as long as I went the right direction (being neurodivergent, I didn't always catch which way we were going). I ran 400/440 and 800/880 in track & field. That was cool, but way too overwhelming. I didn't know why. I was just different from the other kids. I couldn't follow their conversations. I was completely lost in a group. So, I ran on my own. I did a 5K in 15:46. It felt great.

Back to post-divorce, diagnosis, recovery, and the rest of life, and what that has to do with remembering to breathe: I breathed my way into stability, and I think my breathing experience from my youth turned out to shape the rest of my life.

Most everyone knows I successfully auditioned for Army Bands with medical documentation of three stable years qualifying for a waiver, I remarried around the same time. Initial Army training was harder for me than for most. I melted down a few times during AIT, and my wife helped keep me going. Part of Army life was running. I ran and practiced breathing as I ran. Despite how broken I felt inside, I beat most everyone else in running, so I had at least something positive to focus on.

Army life didn't get much easier. It got harder. In 2009, it got “hospital psyche ward” hard. If I hadn't breathed, though, I wouldn't have even been coherent enough to seek help and admit myself to the hospital. The hospital psychiatrist said that I had a cycle of people-pleasing, eventually becoming overwhelmed by taking on too much, and then either exploding or crashing. He said it was one of the cluster C personality disorders. However, he had a brief moment where he hinted that that was the only "rehabilitatable” diagnosis he could give me that wouldn't get me kicked out of the Army. Who knows what he really thought my diagnosis was.

Anyway, the action plan was a bit of therapy, assertiveness training, and a reading assignment: “Feel the Way You Want to Feel, No Matter What”. It was all good stuff, but it was everything I had already learned and knew well. Years of being different taught me to study everything I could about how people work because it didn't come naturally to me.

Trust me, I could probably teach those topics to the therapist. I could also teach my religious leaders how God helps me. It doesn't mean everything is fabulous. It just means I'm still alive.

In the end, life was going to have some seriously sucky challenges, but at least I could breathe. Not even a year later, I was physically assaulted on the job. It turns out that being more assertive exposed how neurodivergent I was, and it caused hostility and even violence in others. I had hidden those parts of me in childhood for just that reason—to avoid bullying and trauma.

When I realized that being more myself caused more trouble and not less, I became overwhelmed at work. Suddenly I lost one of my previous masks of being able to tune out sensory and social overwhelm. Intense military activities caused me to have to go to sick-call due to just shutting down and not being able to think or to do anything. It wasn't a good look, and sick-call was the only recourse in a military scenario when people sensed something wasn't right with me. The only way I kept my head instead of panicking, and I knew when to go to sick-call, was by focusing on breathing. That gave me just enough clarity to make a decision rather than completely lose control.

Army life became so challenging that I had to leave. I didn't want to mess with medical boards for medical discharge. I just waited until the end of my enlistment and filed for VA disability. They gave me 100% disability because my previously stable bipolar disorder had been aggravated due to military service.

After that, life didn't get easier. I still had to figure out what to do for employment. Disability compensation only goes so far. Several times, I thought life was too hard to bear. Aside from my sweet wife and son, and my reliance on God, I remembered to breathe.

That was 11 years ago. I know more about my neurodivergent side than I knew back then. I was diagnosed last year as autistic (some people like to say “with” autism or ASD, but I claim it as my neurotype and part of who I am, so I was diagnosed as autistic and I *am* autistic and don't “have” autism). All of the challenges I previously described (and many more that I left out) are explained by me being an alternate type of person in a world that wasn't really made for me.

Life isn't getting any easier. Sometimes it gets even harder than I ever imagined it would. Do you know what, though? The very thing that caused me to focus so intensely on breathing when I would run, and now on breathing when I'm in distress, was my autistic brain and tendency towards intense focus. The world is brutal, but autism saves me and keeps me going. It's not a hindrance. It's who I am, and I'm still in the game because I find my autistic focus and remember to breathe.

[The picture is from my native prairie, which is a great place to go to remember to breathe]

08/17/2026

Native prairies attract American Goldfinches! This one's a handsome male.

08/17/2026

I thought this 7.5 foot Silphium Sunflower (Helianthus silphioides) reaching toward the sunset sky in my native prairie was appropriate to represent the narration I've been working on to go with the opening song I'm composing for my neurodiversity bassoon music composition project, "Reed My Mind".

Here's the latest version of the text:

*Born*

Born to roam free and to thrive
Born to create and come alive

To love and be loved, our hearts employ
Filling dark voids with lights of joy

Do we not all yearn with starbursting might
To touch all creation with joy and light?

----------

*Joy Light*

While only legends, philosophical metaphors, and New Age pseudoscience speak of sentient beings of light, science at least positively confirms the interchangeability of matter and light.

In my own speculation, I feel warm enveloping bliss when pondering the possibility that light may be composed of joy…and that our bodies’ interchangeable matter might transfigure into light when we reach our full potential—our fullest measure of joy, which is infinite.

When I feel the most vibrant life-giving emotion from these thoughts of joy and light, how can I not be meant to feel the dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin they release?

As a divergent-brained visiting space anthropologist omni-foreigner with massive feelings in a hyper-intense environment, I knew from the start—experiencing infinite joy like the masses would be insufficient…I knew I must become infinite joy itself…the brightest light—joy light!—which I radiate as others join me in harmonic synergy and we animate the universe as one.

Text and photography copyright ©️ 2026 by Ben Lawyer

The Prayerie - My Safe Autistic Elopement Space

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