Day-6-Autism

Everybody has stress they have to deal with in their lives.  Jobs, family, health issues, relationships....anybody that breathes has to deal with some kind of stress.  Even our kids at school are under stress to perform well on standardized tests.
We have a daughter with autism.  She'll be 12 at the end of this month.  She has been the biggest challenge of my life so far, but I get rewarded daily for all the crap that comes with it.
She's in middle school this year, doing fairly well so far.  Grades are pretty good.  Can't complain about A's and B's and now her science and social studies homework isn't being modified. That's a huge improvement from when she was first showing signs of the onset.  She went from saying two word phrases to gradually losing all her words.  She was almost two and we basically had to start all over again with her speech.
I won't go through her whole life's progress, but it has been steady progress, which is a miracle and a blessing.  Every time she comes and asks me something like a typical kid would do, I marvel at some of the wit she has hiding underneath all the routines and weird noises she wants to make sometimes.
As a mom, my main goal is to get her to a point where she can live by herself or at least be able to work a job and take care of herself.  I don't know if it will ever happen.  I know I won't be here forever and to think that she'll be out in the world without me being here to protect her is my biggest fear.  I know one day, I'll die, which doesn't scare me as bad as leaving her does. I worry about her not being able to take care of herself.  Being homeless, or doing something she doesn't realize is wrong and winding up in jail or in some sort of institution where the people are mean to her.  She has such a sweet spirit.  There's not a person that comes in contact with her that doesn't fall in love with her.
My wish and prayer is that she ends up knowing enough to get around in the world and to have a happy life, despite this thing called autism.