What Fiction Can Teach Us About Special Needs Parenting | Jacqueline Friedland, Author of Breathing Underwater

What can fiction reveal about special needs parenting that facts and statistics sometimes cannot? In this episode of INCHSTONES, Sarah Kernion talks with author Jacqueline Friedland about Breathing Underwater, her new novel exploring autism, caregiving, adolescence, independence, identity, and the extraordinary power of having one person who refuses to stop believing in you.
Jacqueline was raised by a professor of special education and began writing fiction in part because she believed stories could create empathy and help people see experiences outside their own. In Breathing Underwater, that mission takes shape through Leo, a 16-year-old autistic boy, and McKenna, a college swimmer whose seemingly successful life is quietly falling apart.
Their relationship raises questions that will feel deeply familiar to many special needs parents: How much support is enough? When does helping become holding on too tightly? How do we prepare autistic children for adulthood when so many services disappear after high school? And how do we learn to live without certainty about what comes next?

Sarah and Jacqueline also discuss the enormous importance of swimming and water safety for autistic children, including the elevated risk of drowning that helped inspire Jacqueline's novel. Their conversation moves beyond statistics, though, into the sensory and emotional experience of water—and the connection, regulation, and joy that can sometimes exist there.

They also explore caregiver stories, maternal identity, invisible labor, the desire to control every variable, and the difficult practice of allowing other people to help. Jacqueline shares one of the central realizations she had while developing Leo: difference does not automatically mean something needs to be fixed. A child's challenges and strengths can coexist, and autism cannot be reduced to one universal experience or one universal solutioAt its heart, this conversation is about support—not saving someone by changing who they are, but becoming the person who remains beside them while they discover what they're capable of.
In This Episode
01:30 — Why Jacqueline chose fiction to tell stories that matter
03:00 — Writing an autistic teenager instead of a young autistic child
05:00 — The “services cliff” after high school and preparing for adulthood
06:00 — How much support is too much—or not enough?
07:45 — Why one person believing in a child can change everything
09:45 — Autism, swimming, water safety, and drowning risk
11:15 — The sensory experience of being underwater
13:00 — Caregiving and the realization that not everyone needs to be “fixed”
15:30 — Invisible labor, motherhood, stress, and learning to relinquish control
18:30 — McKenna, college-student homelessness, and what happens without a support system
20:00 — Why there is no “struggle Olympics” in parenting
21:00 — Finding beautifully typical moments inside nonverbal autism
22:30 — Why caregiver stories can increase empathy and change how we see one another

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of historical and contemporary women’s fiction. After earning degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School and practicing as a commercial litigator, she received her MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her novels have earned multiple honors, including Readers’ Favorite Gold Medals, a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year selection, and a SheReads Best Book Club Pick. Her sixth novel, Breathing Under Water, arrives from Harper Muse in August 2026 following acclaim from Booklist, People, Zibby Owens, and the Jewish Joy Book Club. She lives in Westchester, New York.


Read Jacqueline Friedland's Breathing Underwater, a novel exploring autism, caregiving, identity, swimming, support, and the unexpected relationships that can transform our lives.

Subscribe to the Inchstones Podcast for more caregiver stories, conversations about nonverbal autism, and honest discussions of special needs parenting across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.