North Smithfield author Michal Maoz looks over her painting, which she calls ‘Falling for Me,’ which is on the cover of her new book entitled ‘The Alien In Me,’ a book of poetry chronicling her struggle with Asperger’s Syndrome, at her home in North Smithfield Wednesday. Call Photo/Ernest A. Brown

North Smithfield woman’s book reflects her struggle with Asperger’s Syndrome

By JON BAKER

NORTH SMITHFIELD -- It’s a riveting story, how Michal Maoz has spun her intense suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome into a major triumph.

Now a 35-year-old wife and mother to two teenagers, Maoz recently fulfilled a longtime dream of becoming a published author.
On July 14, the news that her first book — a stunningly revealing 244-page compilation titled “The Alien in Me: Poetry by a Person with Asperger’s Syndrome” — had become reality brought both smiles and tears.
She refers to it as “a poetic autobiography of key moments in my lifetime, my point of view of someone with Asperger’s.
“This is one of the happiest times of my life,” laughed Maoz, a native of Israel. “Of course, the day I got married (to Itzik Maoz, a software consultant for a Lincoln firm) was one, and the days I had my children were two others, but now I’m an author. It feels terrific! I think it’s slowly starting to sink in, that I’m moving forward, that I’m getting there. I feel like I’ve finally been given a chance to show myself.
“This is an opportunity for me to shed the mask I know I’ve been wearing for years,” she added. “Now I can show the world who I am, what I’m all about. By doing that, I’m hoping to help others understand my world, as well as others on the Autism spectrum. This is for those who wish they could express themselves, but are unable.”
The book consists of approximately 150 poems, including “Old Memory;” “Fat Girl;” “Don’t Cry!;” “Child With No Childhood;” and, naturally, “The Alien in Me.” Maoz also prefaces each section with a short story indicating the reasons behind the verses.
All come back to the definition of Asperger’s: a form of high-functioning Autism; some of its major symptoms include social difficulties, such as the inability to read facial expressions or body language; misunderstanding social rules and cues and problems making friends.
Amazingly, Maoz wasn’t diagnosed with the syndrome until seven years ago, not long after a doctor decided her oldest had the same disorder (as was the “baby” two years later). When informed, Maoz felt like a mammoth weight had been pulled from her shoulders. She finally knew why she had suffered such internal and external torture since childhood.

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Maoz knew as a little girl growing up in a suburb of Tel Aviv she wasn’t like other children. She used to wonder, while girls her age played hopscotch and with dolls, why she often trekked by her lonesome into the fields to climb trees or chase bugs.
“When I was about 10, I decided I wanted to play with the other children, but that was difficult because they wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “They considered me annoying and different … They didn’t like me because I didn’t follow their social rules. I followed my own. I had to win every game.
“I was crying almost every day, and it got to a point where I was being bullied,” she added. “I remember they’d include me in a game of ‘Hide & Seek,’ but they wouldn’t ‘seek,” and I’d be left there for hours. Other times, I’d get beaten up.
“Because of all that, I’d crawl into my own little shell. I’d sit in my room and contemplate why I was so unusual. I always had very deep thoughts, like ‘Is there a God?’ I also wondered if I was an alien, if I was put here on Earth as an experiment from another world to see if I could learn proper human behavior: How to speak, how to behave with people. Simply, I felt I couldn’t.
“I was a total outsider. Even my mother and sister made me feel that way. Those were horrible experiences.”
To comfort herself, she’d retreat to her bedroom. As a four-year-old (she lost her dad in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 at nine months old), she found solace in drawing and coloring. At seven, she began composing poems about not fitting in.
“Writing became an outlet for me,” she noted. “It helped me cope with all the feelings I had of being alone, and fear, sadness, disappointment and my few moments with happiness. Back then, I couldn’t label those emotions, but I could feel them, so I wrote them down.”
 
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As she grew older, Maoz spent an exorbitant amount of time watching TV – including sitcoms such as “Happy Days,” “Mork & Mindy,” “The Facts of Life” and “Saved By the Bell.”
“With all the bullying in school and outside it, I found a solution,” she said with spunk. “All of those hours alone in my room got me thinking, ‘Why don’t you change a few things about yourself for acceptance?’ I started with my laugh, which everyone seemed to hate. I tried new ones from those I watched on television.
“My mother hated it,” she added. “She couldn’t understand why I was using a fake laugh. She’d say, ‘Tafsiki!’ (Stop!), but I kept doing it to be more like others. I also studied the encyclopedia and dictionary, and read many books. That also helped me learn a lot about social interaction, and I tried to implement what I learned in my life.”
The ploy worked a bit, but not enough for a dramatic change.
When she reached high school in Herzeliya, the studying paid off, as officials placed Maoz in an advanced scholastic program, mainly science-based.
“I had a hard time; academically, I felt more stress than I had before, but there was the social component, too,” she offered. “When I was 15, I went into a depression, and if affected my schoolwork. My grades went down, and I begged my mom to talk to the principal and get me out of the horrible science courses.
“When she found out I had been crying all the time – I did a good job of hiding it – my mom took me to therapy, and I eventually got better – with a lot of work on my own head,” she continued. “It didn’t last.”
Upon graduation, she was drafted by the Israeli Defense Force, like all 18-year-old Israelis, in 1990. Just eight months later, she became sick with a malady no doctor could analyze. The good news: She met a strapping young medic on a team-building seminar in the desert, and immediately fell in love.
“I had three primary childhood dreams: The first was to live in America; the second to publish a book of poetry; and the third to marry and be a young mom,” she said. “I actually told my mother about those dreams when I was a child, and she just laughed them off.”
After Iztik left the Israeli Army, the couple – with their two youngsters – moved to New England. Both parents admittedly have experienced hard times with their children, but could deal rather well, given Michal’s history with Asperger’s.

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She later began creating paintings – call them visual depictions of her poetry – and then a line of jewelry with the same themes of insecurity and pain. Her signature painting? “The Mask,” which shows a teen-age girl’s sadness, her left eye covered by a theater-like mask, one with a grin for the outside to see.
“’The Alien in Me’” was chosen for the title because I still feel that person inside me, though not as often,” Maoz explained. “Even though I did change myself, I still feel like I’m not me; that is, like I still wear that mask. There are times I still feel like an alien.
“Nevertheless, I did a series of 25 paintings that I call the ‘Aspie Series,’ and all relate to poems I’ve written about how those with Asperger’s feel,” she continued. “I hope to make the series into a second book, with the poems and paintings in it. This first one, though, is a thrill. It took me 10 years to compile all of them, plus some translated from Hebrew. I’ve written hundreds of them since I was 7, and – in fact – I have enough in Hebrew for at least two books.
“I started making jewelry as well, and it’s because I thought that would be another way to raise awareness of Asperger’s, my company (Aurtistic-Spectrum.com) and my speaking engagements.”
Noted Iztik: “Her book ($19.95 in local stores) is now on sale in Europe, Japan and Canada, and I think it’s amazing, courageous and fulfilling for my wife. I couldn’t be more proud of her.”