Julia Dupire, Spark Mentor

Working as a mentor for autistic children at The Sherkow Center was a profound and transformative experience. It offered a reckoning with my own personal history and a journey into the intricacies of human connection.

Growing up, I had a non-verbal autistic uncle. I remember watching him yet feeling as though I could never quite understand him. I carried a sense of helplessness for much of my childhood - eagerly hoping to comprehend his world yet being unable to do so. It wasn’t until I began my work at the Sherkow Center that I began to fathom his world, to interpret his silence, his signals, his presence.

At The Sherkow Center, I was introduced to a psychodynamic framework that doesn't just look at behaviors but seeks to understand the internal emotional lives of autistic children and adolescents. This approach taught me that autism is not a disorder of emotion but of expression and regulation. Many autistic children feel the world with extraordinary intensity but do not always have the tools to communicate their thoughts, feelings and emotions.

One patient in particular challenged me deeply. At first, she would have explosive, impulsive outbursts, and I often left our sessions feeling unsure if I was helping at all. But the Sherkow model emphasizes patience, empathy, and the belief in emotional development over time. I learned to sit with her through the chaos, not to fix it, but to witness it with steadiness and care. Slowly, things shifted. She began to name her feelings before they overwhelmed her. She’d reach out instead of push away. And one day, she simply held my hand after a session, a quiet gesture, but for us, it felt like a breakthrough. With time, she came to me with increasing warmth, and eventually hugged me and told me she loved me - a memory I hold so dear to my heart because it represents just how far she was able to come along. I was able to see her grow from a girl furiously rebuking the world around to a young woman owning her emotions and embracing the people in her life. 

These moments taught me that progress is rarely linear. There are steps forward and steps back. But when a child begins to trust you with their inner world, even in fragments, it is a sacred exchange. I came to understand my uncle better through the children and teenagers I mentored. I could finally see the depth behind his silence, the pain behind his cries, the love he never found the words for.

My time at the Sherkow Center reshaped how I think about communication, resilience, and the human need to be understood. It wasn’t just the children who grew and evolved, I did too. I try to carry that growth from this formative time of my life with me as the years pass, remembering that healing doesn’t always look like a straight line, but often begins when we offer someone our presence, our patience and our eyes.