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Ellen Matsuda and Joey Matsuda

Ellen Matsuda and Joey Matsuda are mother and son in the Matsuda family of Pasadena, California. Their relationship combines Ellen’s direct, protective care with Joey’s affectionate nature and literal, unfiltered questions.

Overview

Joey, born June 20, 1987, was Ellen’s youngest child. He was seven when his brother Cody attempted suicide and became nonspeaking in spring 1995; he turned eight before Susie left for Stanford that fall. Ellen’s disability-services expertise did not spare either of them the fear of those events, but she answered his questions directly and remained attentive to his need for reassurance.

Ellen’s demanding advocacy work and the needs of three older children left her exhausted. Joey’s affectionate temperament and relatively less urgent needs made him seem like the “easier” child. His literal, unfiltered questions nevertheless required honest answers, particularly after Cody’s attempt: “What does that mean? Suicide?” “But he’s not dead…Right? He’s still alive?” “Why did Cody want to stop living?” “Will he try again?”

At a Saturday morning family meeting, Ellen explained Cody’s attempt while Joey asked questions she could scarcely answer herself. He drew their house and six smiling family members, labeling the figures MOM, DAD, SUSIE, PATTIE, JOEY, and CODY. Ellen brought the drawing to the hospital and placed it beside Cody’s bed, near the equipment supporting him.

In his late twenties, Joey identified himself as autistic after reading about neurodivergence. Ellen answered, “Yeah, we knew.” His recognition gave him language for traits long familiar within the family. As adults, mother and son also shared a commitment to disability rights, expressed through Ellen’s advocacy and Joey’s legal work.

Origins

Joey was born June 20, 1987, Ellen’s fourth child after Susie (born 1977), Cody (born 1979), and Pattie (born 1982). Ellen, born around 1951, was in her mid-thirties and balancing disability-services oversight work with parenthood. Susie’s perfectionism, Cody’s intellectual gifts and social vulnerability, and Pattie’s high activity and ADHD all shaped the established household by the time Joey arrived.

Joey arrived after the family had established routines and while Ellen was experienced but often exhausted. His older siblings could help with his care. Susie, nine when he was born and nearly ten, became a “second mother” in daily practice: reading to him at bedtime, helping with homework as he grew, and playing with him even when her own schoolwork demanded time. Ellen relied on that bond while continuing her advocacy work.

Joey was affectionate and comparatively easygoing. He played, asked questions, hugged freely, and admired his siblings. He did not require the same school advocacy as Pattie or the vigilance prompted by Cody’s gullibility, social vulnerability, and fatigue that developed after an illness around 1993. Ellen’s attention was often drawn to those more urgent needs.

Being “easier” also meant Joey received less of Ellen’s focused attention, a source of guilt for her later. She sometimes worked until nine or ten at night. Greg’s evening calls asked, “Have you eaten dinner?” and she sometimes said yes when she had not. Joey grew up where disability advocacy was ordinary conversation, ASL became a family language after Cody’s crisis, and several relatives’ autistic traits were familiar before the family had names for all of them.

Joey’s unfiltered speech, literal thinking, difficulty with implied rules, and strong preference for honesty fit a household where direct communication, movement, and routines were ordinary. His traits did not draw the attention that Cody’s crisis and Pattie’s repeated school conflicts did. Ellen knew those traits were present, but Joey’s needs were generally met within the family’s existing practices.

Dynamics and Communication

Ellen spoke directly with Joey, whose literal thinking benefited from clear language. When he asked painful questions, she tried to answer honestly in terms he could understand rather than using euphemisms or misleading reassurance.

At seven, during the Saturday family meeting after Cody’s attempt, Joey asked, “What does that mean? Suicide?” Ellen tried to explain while coping with her own fear and attending to the younger children.

Susie helped explain: “It means he…he tried to make himself stop living, Joey.” Joey asked, “But he’s not dead…Right? He’s still alive?” Ellen confirmed that Cody was alive. Joey continued: “Why did Cody want to stop living?” “Will he try again?” “Can I see him?” His questions required Ellen to respond while she was still frightened for Cody.

Joey applied Ellen’s statements as consistent rules. At a family dinner after Cody and Andy began dating, eight-year-old Joey asked Andy, “Are you and Cody gonna get married?” The adults’ discomfort puzzled him. He explained, “Mama said people who love each other get married sometimes,” and “Cody said ‘love you’ on the phone yesterday. I heard him.” He saw no reason the rule should exclude Cody and Andy.

Ellen suppressed a smile. Joey’s question reflected his acceptance of Cody’s relationship and his literal use of the family’s teaching about love, without the hesitation other adults brought to the subject. For Joey, the rule applied to his brother as plainly as to anyone else.

Ellen also cared for Joey through explanation, routine, and attention to his fears. After Pattie came home almost too exhausted to walk from an October 1998 Backstreet Boys concert, eleven-year-old Joey worried about her and the baby. Ellen did not dismiss him. She and Greg stood with him at Pattie’s bedside so he could hear and watch her breathing.

When Joey identified himself as autistic in his late twenties, Ellen answered, “Yeah, we knew.” She had recognized his directness, literal thinking, pattern recognition, and honesty. All four Matsuda children and Greg were autistic, though their paths to recognition differed. Joey’s presentation had not made his needs seem urgent in a family already accustomed to direct communication and varied support.

Family and Cultural Context

As the youngest child in a family confronting Cody’s medical crisis and Pattie’s school conflicts, Joey had needs that drew less attention because they were seldom the most urgent. Greg’s autism was also unrecognized until the late 1990s. The household’s familiarity with neurodivergent communication meant Joey’s traits were accepted as part of daily family life, even before he had language for them himself.

Joey’s relationship with Ellen developed in a neurodivergent household where direct language, literal thinking, and varied communication styles were familiar. Greg communicated in precise, sometimes unmodulated sentences; Cody used AAC and ASL after becoming nonspeaking; Pattie’s ADHD affected her filtering and emotional regulation. Joey’s own autistic traits therefore fit the family’s daily communication more easily than they might have elsewhere.

That familiarity protected Joey from the school suspensions, behavioral plans, and labels such as “willful” or “defiant” that shaped Pattie’s childhood. It also meant he lacked a name for his own experience until he encountered accounts of autism online in his late twenties. The family’s general willingness to accommodate different needs did not give Joey the same self-understanding as an explicit explanation.

Ellen had recognized Joey’s traits but did not press for a formal diagnosis while the household was meeting his needs. Her response to his adult self-identification confirmed that recognition without making a clinical label a condition of belonging or support.

Joey’s question about Cody and Andy’s marriage also exposed a tension between the family’s egalitarian beliefs and the social caution adults brought to a gay relationship in 1995. He applied Ellen’s teaching that people in love could marry without making an exception for his brother. The adults’ discomfort arose around a question Joey regarded as ordinary. His literalness made the family’s stated principle harder to leave as an abstraction.

The same habit of applying principles consistently later informed Joey’s disability-rights and LGBTQ+ legal work. Ellen taught him to challenge “that’s just how things are”; Greg modeled precision and close attention to contradictions; Moore family resources supported his education. Joey’s own direct communication turned those influences into an approach that confronted institutional evasions with facts. His mixed Japanese American and White heritage also connected him to both the Matsuda and Moore family networks.

Shared History and Milestones

June 20, 1987: Joey’s Birth

Joey was Ellen’s fourth and youngest child, born while she balanced advocacy work with raising Susie, Cody, and Pattie. He was the family’s affectionate youngest child; Susie was nurturing, Cody intellectually curious, and Pattie physically bold and protective.

Spring 1995: Cody’s Suicide Attempt

When Cody attempted suicide with his prescribed fluoxetine, Joey was seven and in second grade. At the Saturday morning meeting, he curled against Susie while Ellen explained what had happened. Pattie reacted with anger and punched a hole in the wall.

Joey asked, “What does that mean? Suicide?” After Susie explained, he asked, “But he’s not dead…Right? He’s still alive?”

At the kitchen table, Joey drew their house and the six family members as stick figures labeled MOM, DAD, SUSIE, PATTIE, JOEY, and CODY. Cody was smiling, and the family was together. The drawing expressed Joey’s wish that they could remain safe and whole.

Ellen brought the drawing to Cody’s hospital room and set it beside his bed. Seeing Joey’s smiling picture beside the equipment keeping Cody alive made her sob. She could not undo what Joey had learned about death, but she still wanted to protect his sense that the family could remain together.

Summer 1995: Cody and Andy’s Relationship

After Cody and Andy began dating, Joey met Andy at a family dinner with the extended Moore-Matsuda family. He saw Cody brighten when Andy arrived, noticed them holding hands under the table, and heard Cody’s AAC device announce, “YOU’RE MY BOYFRIEND.”

Eight-year-old Joey asked Andy, “Are you and Cody gonna get married?” Several adults looked down at their food, and Joey was confused by their discomfort. He explained, “Mama said people who love each other get married sometimes,” and “Cody said ‘love you’ on the phone yesterday. I heard him.”

Ellen saw that Joey was accepting of Cody’s relationship. His question contradicted the “won’t someone think of the children” argument that a child would be harmed or confused by a gay family member’s love. Joey understood her teaching about marriage as applying to Cody and Andy, and he could not see why the adults treated that conclusion as awkward.

Fall 1995: Susie Leaves for Stanford

Joey cried and begged Susie to stay when she left for Stanford. He asked when she would return and who would read to him at bedtime. Her absence felt like another loss after Cody’s crisis, even though Susie continued loving him and stayed in touch. Ellen increased her own attention to Joey but could not replace Susie’s distinct role as his “second mother.”

Ellen recognized his grief while managing work, Cody’s recovery, and Pattie’s school conflicts. She kept routines steady, affirmed that he could miss Susie, and helped them maintain contact through calls, visits, letters, and drawings.

October 24, 1998: Pattie’s Concert and Joey’s Fear

By October 1998, eleven-year-old Joey had spent months seeing Pattie vomit, cry unexpectedly, and endure pain during pregnancy. When she came home from the Backstreet Boys concert at 10:42 p.m., exhausted and barely able to walk, Joey appeared at the top of the stairs holding his GameBoy and looking frightened.

Joey asked, “What’s wrong with Pattie?” Ellen explained that Pattie was exhausted after the concert, but her condition still frightened him. “She’s walking,” he observed. “How can she be asleep and walking?” He repeatedly asked whether the baby was safe and whether something had happened.

After Pattie settled in bed, Joey asked, “Can I make sure she’s breathing?” He explained, “Sometimes people stop breathing when they’re really tired.” Greg and Ellen stood with him at the foot of her bed. They watched her chest rise and fall and heard her steady snoring, giving him direct evidence that she was breathing.

Joey later asked to sleep in his parents’ room, something he had not done for years. “What if something happens to Pattie while she’s sleeping?” he asked. Ellen let him sleep on their bedroom floor. His fear for his sister mattered more in that moment than an expectation that he sleep alone.

Mid-2010s: Joey Identifies Himself as Autistic

In his late twenties, Joey recognized himself in online descriptions of autism and neurodivergence. Discussing traits with Greg and Cody, he said, “Wait, I do that too…” He did not pursue a formal diagnosis; the language and self-understanding mattered to him without that step.

Ellen later wrote “My Youngest Son Taught Me About Invisible Autism” about the difference between noticing familiar traits and giving Joey language for his own experience. She answered his self-identification with “Yeah, we knew.” She had not pressed for assessment during childhood because their household already made room for his needs and his traits had not called for a particular intervention.

Joey’s self-identification let him reconsider earlier social misunderstandings: “OH. That’s why I kept accidentally insulting people.” Ellen’s “Yeah, we knew” affirmed that the family had recognized his traits without treating him as defective. The new vocabulary helped him understand the same directness and close attention to contradictions that later marked his online debates.

Public and Private Life

Ellen attended Joey’s school events when she could, but advocacy work and the older children’s needs limited the focused time she could give her youngest child. In public, they could appear to be a busy professional mother and an affectionate, “easier” son whose needs drew little institutional attention.

Her work could make her seem distant. At home, she had answered Joey’s questions about suicide, stood beside Pattie’s bed with him when he feared she might stop breathing, and brought his drawing to Cody’s hospital room. Those acts of care were less visible than her professional role.

Ellen answered what she could, took Joey’s fears seriously, and kept familiar routines during crises. She could not replace Susie’s place in his daily life after Stanford, but she continued offering practical reassurance and presence.

Ellen’s disability-services expertise helped her recognize Joey’s autistic traits without making a diagnosis a prerequisite for support. She could defend his blunt honesty when others called it rude; at home, she valued his clarity after long days navigating indirect social expectations.

Emotional Experience

Ellen loved Joey deeply and later felt guilty that her affectionate youngest child had received less of her focused attention. Cody’s medical crisis, Pattie’s school conflicts, Susie’s hidden strain, and Ellen’s work repeatedly demanded attention. Joey’s comparatively less urgent needs could leave him last in the order of response, though not in her affection.

Ellen remembered Joey’s drawing of the family, his question “What does that mean? Suicide?”, and his fear when Pattie returned exhausted from the concert. She wished she had been home more often instead of working until ten at night and that he had not had to grow up amid repeated family crises.

Ellen was also proud of Joey’s kindness, his insistence on applying the family’s principles consistently, and his later disability-rights work. As a teenager he challenged homophobic claims online through questions and evidence; as an adult he became an attorney. His self-identification as autistic and his legal advocacy continued values she had taught him without erasing her regret about the attention he had missed.

Joey understood Ellen’s love through her direct answers, practical care, and willingness to stay with him when he was afraid. Her late hours and Susie’s departure still hurt, but he did not regard her absences as proof that she did not care for him.

His fear after Pattie’s concert—“Sometimes people stop breathing when they’re really tired” and “What if something happens to Pattie while she’s sleeping?”—was shaped by Cody’s earlier near-fatal crisis. Ellen could not remove that fear, but she and Greg gave Joey a way to check on Pattie and let him remain close that night.

In adulthood, Ellen and Joey shared a commitment to challenging ableist systems. Joey’s direct questioning and attention to contradictions, visible when he asked about Cody and Andy at eight, became useful in his legal practice. Ellen recognized a continuation of her own refusal to accept discriminatory explanations as inevitable.

Health and Access

Ellen recognized Joey’s literal thinking, pattern recognition, unfiltered speech, and honesty. Susie, Cody, Pattie, and Joey were autistic, with different histories of recognition; Pattie also had ADHD, and Greg was autistic. Joey’s presentation did not point to an unmet need for formal intervention in their household.

Joey did not face Pattie’s school suspensions or Cody’s chronic illness. His being seen as “easier” did not establish that his autism was milder. The family used ASL after 1995, communicated directly, maintained routines, and treated movement and different ways of responding as ordinary. Those practices met many of his needs without singling him out.

Ellen did not push for formal diagnosis during Joey’s childhood. He was functioning within a household already adapted for several neurodivergent people, and other family crises required urgent attention. The absence of a diagnosis did not mean she withheld support; it did, however, delay Joey’s access to language for his own experience.

When Joey identified himself as autistic in his late twenties, Ellen’s “Yeah, we knew” affirmed that she had noticed his traits without pathologizing them. He chose not to pursue a clinical diagnosis. Their approach combined support without diagnostic gatekeeping with his right to name and understand his experience for himself.

Changes Through Family Crises

Cody’s 1995 Attempt

Cody’s attempt forced seven-year-old Joey to confront the possibility of a family member dying. At the Saturday meeting, his questions—“What does that mean? Suicide?” “But he’s not dead…Right?” “Why did Cody want to stop living?”—demanded honesty from Ellen while she was still coping with her own fear.

His smiling drawing held onto the possibility of the family together. Ellen’s decision to place it beside Cody’s bed recognized both Joey’s wish for safety and the family’s need for connection during the crisis. Joey learned that someone he loved could nearly die and that the family could remain present to one another afterward.

Susie’s Departure

Susie’s departure brought another loss of daily closeness after Cody’s crisis. Ellen took on more of Joey’s care while he learned that Susie could be away and still love him. That understanding did not remove his grief at her absence.

Pattie’s 1998 Pregnancy

When Pattie came home from the concert nearly unable to walk, Joey asked, “Can I make sure she’s breathing?” Cody’s crisis had made that fear concrete. Ellen and Greg could not prevent it, but they stood with Joey at Pattie’s bedside and let him sleep close to them.

Adult Autism Self-Identification

Joey’s self-identification in his late twenties gave him language for familiar traits. Ellen’s acknowledgment showed that she had noticed them without treating him as defective. He claimed autistic identity on his own terms and brought lived experience into the disability-rights work he was already doing.

Lasting Influence

Ellen taught Joey to treat love without a gender exception, disability without shame, and injustice as something to question. His childhood question “Are you and Cody gonna get married?” showed how directly he applied those values to Cody and Andy.

Ellen also showed him that advocacy involved practical support through crises and that accommodation was an ordinary right. Joey carried those lessons into disability-rights law, where his direct questions and attention to inconsistencies challenged ableist systems.

Joey continued the Moore-Matsuda family’s work in a different profession. Ellen confronted institutional harm through disability-services oversight; Joey confronted it through legal arguments grounded in facts, autonomy, and dignity. Both rejected “that’s just how things are” as a sufficient answer to discrimination.

Ellen’s pride in Joey’s adulthood coexisted with guilt about the attention she had not always given him as a child. His work and their continuing bond showed her that the family’s crises and her absences had not prevented him from building a life shaped by affection and the values she taught.

Growing up amid several family crises shaped Joey’s fears without defining his entire childhood. A home where neurodivergent communication was familiar gave him support, even as it delayed his access to diagnostic language. His adult legal work joined the family’s principles with his own literal, questioning approach.

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