The Huffington Post publishes the beautiful letter that Jess Wilson wrote to her autistic daughter Brooke on her eighth birthday:

Over time, you changed everything. You sure as heck changed me. Thank God. You changed the mother I thought I would be into the one that I needed to be. And it wasn't just me. You changed your daddy and your sister and everyone who came into our world. You laughed at what we thought mattered and showed us what really did. You stretched us past our insecurities and doubts to a place painted with a technicolor brush. With the vivid colors of a life lived awake, alive, aware. You pulled us into hearing beyond the background noise, tuning in to a totally different frequency where there IS no background. Where every utterance is crisp and clear and has equal meaning and weight and beauty.

You made us cry with your anguish yes, but oh, my sweet girl, how you've made us laugh! And God when you laugh -- well I would swear the heavens break open and flood the earth with joy when you let it loose. How did I describe it once? The laugh that starts with her shoulders and takes her whole body along for the ride. The laugh that sets her eyes on fire and whose sheer energy could launch a rocket ship and send it into orbit. The contagious laugh that leaves an electric happiness in its wake. There is no greater gift than that laugh.