Ramona Rolle-Berg, Ph.D., HTCP, MS, CPGL Kara Vander Linden, EdD, MS, BA Abstract The experiences of parents rearing an autistic child(ren) framed an exploration of caregiver well-being using Glaser’s classic grounded theory. The theory delineates struggles, stress, and self-growth through service. Viewed as a roadmap, strengthening devotion guides caregivers through a fear-driven landscape of altered perceptions that fuels evolution in awarenss about what it means to love nonjudgmentally with unqualified faith not only in a child(ren) but in one’s own resilience. Acceptance, adaptation, and a reclaiming of relinguished self-focus define strengthening devotion. In accepting, entrapment wanes as emotions signal reengagement; in adapting, self-esteem develops with emotion regulation; and in reclaiming life, resilience signals reimagining of self. As uncertainty and reactivity are delimited through activities of service, devotion evolves, conceptualized as a stage-dependent growth continuum, namely: Strengthening Parental Devotion, Strengthening Relational Devotion, and Strengthening Personal Devotion. Ultimately, parents may use the strengthening devotion roadmap to corroborate where they have been, how far they have traveled, and chart proactively to lower stress, improve health outcomes and re-engage with life’s unlimited potential. Keywords: caregiver, autism spectrum disorders, devotion, classic grounded theory, parenting, presence Introduction One in 45 US children exhibits behaviours representative of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Zablotsky, Black, Maenner, Schieve, & Blumberg, 2015). These behaviours produce post-traumatic-stress syndrome-conditioned reactivity in parent caregivers. This research offers caregivers a pathway to thrive rather than survive on the frontlines of daily caregiving. Glaser’s classic grounded theory (CGT) method provided the systematic structure through which Strengthening Devotion emerged as a roadmap for parent caregivers’ experiences of self-growth through service. The Basic Social Process (Bigus, Glaser, & Hadden, 1982; Glaser, 1978) that arose is grounded in data, conceptualizing experiences of parent caregivers for wellness professionals engaged with this population. Source data integrated 33 items, including first-person published accounts in books, web pages, blogs, and direct interviews of parent caregivers responding to the grand tour question: “Tell me about your experience as a caregiver.” Method The purpose was to develop a theory to explain and to categorize the experiences of parents who provided caregiving to their children with ASD. Varied perspectives were sought. Classic grounded theory was used to analyze data systematically. Discovery of underlying patterns of behavior that might lead to escalating levels of abstraction and conceptualization was the goal (Glaser, 1978). Participants were adults 21 years of age and older, who are parents and primary caregivers for a child with ASD and adults identified through theoretical sampling prepared to share experiences of caregiving for a child. Years of caregiving ranged from a minimum of eight to a maximum of several decades. Study participants were also single or married and provided caregiving in situations that included neurotypical children and multiple children with ASD families. Establishing the boundaries of the emergent theory required interviews with participants outside the primary study group (e.g., caregivers of neurotypical children). Recorded participant experiences were transcribed into digital data and then underwent considerable and deliberate fragmentation through conceptual coding, the core CGT process (Holton, 2007). Constant comparison of incident with incident, and incident with concept, etc., initially generated substantive descriptors and later theoretical categories (Glaser, 1992). Incidents were identified line-by-line within the empirical data and then assigned a code. Codes were grouped and compared when patterns or variations on patterns were recognized. Two types of CGT coding procedures were utilized: substantive coding, which collectively comprise open and selective coding, and theoretical coding. Open coding supported the early work with the raw data. ...