Survival mode

Survival mode doesn’t feel chaotic when you’re living it, it feels normal.

This long weekend, we spent time down the beach as a family.

Somewhere between sand, snacks, and chaos, we got chatting.

Then laughing.

Laughing out loud whilst thinking, how the hell did we survive that?

We were talking about Lachy as a little boy.

Overstimulated.

Big emotions.

Outbursts that came out of nowhere.

Mischief that pushed every single button I had, and then some.

And Mum?

Overstimulated too.

Emotionally dysregulated.

Reacting, not responding.

Absolutely drowning.

It was the blind leading the blind.

He’d poke.

I’d snap.

He’d escalate.

I’d melt down.

Round and round we went.

I thought I was just failing.

Failing to parent properly.

Failing to stay calm.

Failing to “get it right”.

What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t know, was that my brain didn’t make sense of the world around me either… just like his. I didn’t understand that the noise, the chaos, the emotions, the constant demands, they weren’t just “hard”.

They were genuinely overwhelming to my nervous system.

I was 19 when I became his mum.

A baby raising a baby, pretending she had a clue.

A young single mum, winging it day by day. Running in pure survival mode.

No manual.

No diagnosis.

No language for what was actually happening.

Just two dysregulated humans colliding at full speed.

It was chaos. Beautiful, exhausting, wild chaos.

Him pushing every button without even trying.

Me becoming overwhelmed, overstimulated, reactive.

Neither of us feeling understood, but both of us trying in the only ways we knew how.

The truth is

We grew up together.

We healed together.

We learned together.

We tried to make sense of a world that made absolutely no sense to either of us.

And somehow, we made it.

No idea how, but we bloody did.

But now?

His gratitude for a younger version of me who was just trying to figure shit out one day at a time.

His compassion for the mum who was overstimulated, overwhelmed, and still showed up anyway.

Watching him as a dad. I get emotional.

Because he gets it.

He understands nervous systems.

He understands overstimulation.

He understands emotional dysregulation.

All of it, he just gets.

I’m grateful.

Grateful we survived the madness.

Grateful we found language for what we lived.

Grateful that love carried us when understanding didn’t.

Here we are.

Still laughing.

Still healing.

Still figuring life out, together. 💛

For the mums who didn’t know yet,

The ones who were overwhelmed, snappy, exhausted, and trying to hold it together with nothing left in the tank.

You weren’t broken.

You weren’t a bad mum.

You were doing the best you could with a nervous system that was in survival mode.

You loved.

You stayed.

You kept going.

And that counts for more than getting it “right”.

Clarity can come later.

Healing can come later.

And grace, you deserve that too 💛