Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Graham-Garza.
Hi Lisa, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My husband Rick and I met in college and then went to dental school together so we are both dentists. We have two beautiful boys. Our younger son was diagnosed with severe autism in 2004 and our world changed forever.
I had to alter my career to take care of my son who now had a lifelong disability. Meanwhile, my older son was diagnosed with dyslexia a few years later so he required extra attention and help with school as well. It was a lot! My parents thankfully live right by us and have helped me through all of it. We were fortunate to have the financial resources to be able to put the boys in private schools, extra tutors and therapy and anything else they needed and it’s been a long journey, but they have both, progressed a lot. Our older son has graduated from college, is working in Houston and recently married a fabulous young woman so I have an amazing daughter now too! And two grand doggies that came with the marriage!
Our son Tyler with autism is now 22 and developmentally has made it to about seven years old, which is a huge improvement from where he started, and it took a great deal of time, money, energy, and a huge village to help him get there. Because we saw how hard life is for Autism families, especially those without financial resources, a friend and I started Autism Rescue Angels 501(c)3 nonprofit to assist teens and adults with autism. As our children aged, we saw the huge lack of resources for people with autism once they become adults. We are trying to make a difference in how the community prepares for this wave of children with autism that are quickly becoming adults with autism.
Autism parents need so much help navigating a very hard system with such few affordable for choices for a person with autism that still needs care once they are adults. Our son Tyler will need lifelong care and so now of course we are turning our attention to residential options and programs for adults and it really is very tough out there. We are just trying to make a difference here in our little corner of the world. Being in the Non Profit world for the last decade, I’ve met so many wonderful people representing other causes and have leaned in to help everywhere that I can! Any nonprofits that help with literacy, access to care, improving healthcare outcomes, educating healthcare providers on treating people with disabilities and any programs helping especially women with financial literacy all have my heart because they address the root problems of what leads a family to be in a poor economic situation. When autism hits, finances get even tighter and it can just devastate and bankrupt families quickly. I have leaned in and been part of the Ladies for Literacy Guild for many years now and was on the executive team promoting literacy in our city. We meet so many Autism moms who able for help through Autism Rescue Angels who aren’t even able to read all of the documents that they’re expected to sign in a public school setting to help their child. Teaching a mother to read changes the trajectory of everybody in that household!
The Womens Resource nonprofit is another group that I help as we teach financial literacy to young girls and women in our city, again such a crucial skill needed to be able to be able to raise a family and take care of themselves – with or without a child with a disability!
Recently leaders like myself in the autism community got together and created a program called NEEDS, which has fallen under Crimestoppers to educate first responders and law-enforcement on dealing with teens and adults with autism out in the community or in their homes. This training has been lacking and is much needed, and this has been a huge undertaking, but we are making progress!
Another program that I’ve given a lot of my time to is teaching dental students here at our local UT Houston dental school, where I went to school, on treating patients with IDD or intellectual and developmental disability. The curriculum needed to be adjusted to reflect the current and staggering statistic of one in 31 people being diagnosed with autism
It has been so rewarding to have our dental students taught early on in their training on how to be prepared with behavior management techniques for people with IDD and the more complex medical histories people with autism can present with.
My older son Ryan and I just wrote a children’s book, The Fluffy Bunny with Autism, that just was published and generously underwritten by CKW luxe magazine on being a friend to a person with autism. It is written to be read to typical children preschool, kindergarten and first grade ages, and is a series of short stories with discussion questions at the back and resources for parents and teachers to learn more about autism with the children. We are so proud of it and proceeds from the book go directly back to our local autism families through Autism Rescue Angels!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has been so hard!
Finding out your 23 month old son has a permanent lifelong disability came out of nowhere and was so gut wrenching, The devastation and heartbreak are just indescribable.
Every other accomplishment I’ve ever had before that moment just went out the window. Like most parents, my focus is my children and when they are not doing well nothing else really matters. It’s definitely taken a team of therapists that we paid to come into our home for Tyler’s in-home ABA therapy and then we were fortunate to be able to send him to many private autism schools, behavior centers, OT, speech therapy,- you name it therapy!
We have our boy back -he can talk to us and tell us how he feels. He likes to travel. He enjoys the holidays.
He and our older son Ryan, and now my daughter in law Alisha too, are the lights of our life but we are now looking to the future and what will happen to Tyler if something happens to us first. It’s not normal to want to outlive your children, but in this case, I definitely would love to be with Tyler till the end of his life and I hope that I am able to care for him forever but realistically, we need to be looking for long-term care solutions for him for when we aren’t able to do it anymore or we are not here. So that has been a new stage of this grief process. Having to give up a career that I went to school for forever to achieve, changing gears and starting a nonprofit, learning all we could about advocating for people with autism and being a voice for the voiceless is not the life I imagined I would have, but I’d like to think that I’ve done what I can with what God has given me. I definitely am a believer in the phrase to much has been given, much is expected. I hope I have given it my all to improve the lives of people with autism and other disabilities. I am a faith filled and religious person and I look forward to the hope of Heaven and seeing my son there healthy and healed and whole.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Well, I am most proud of my sons. They have been my greatest joy and my greatest challenge. Like most parents they are my world, but since my sons have both had extra challenges, it’s an even bigger emotional journey.
I so enjoyed being a general dentist and taking care of patients for many years, but eventually something had to give, and that was my career.
Once my boys were more stable and older, I was able to come up for air and decided we needed to create a local nonprofit that helped autism families in the Houston area where all funds raised would stay here!
And that is how Autism Rescue Angels was started.
I’ve really enjoyed learning the development and fundraising world and have taken a lot of courses at the Rice grad school in philanthropy and nonprofit leadership for this. I love learning! And now it’s an honor to say that I am a children’s book author.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I have taken risks I guess you could say in changing careers completely to align with my passion for advocating for people with disabilities – specifically autism.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.autismrescueangels.org
- Instagram: @lgrahamgarzarealtor
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1A9TSLGjzF/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- LinkedIn: Lisa Graham-Garza
Image Credits
Rita Ramirez photography
