I spent a long time in survival mode and didn’t even realize it.
When your life revolves around making ends meet while still trying to keep up with trends, expectations, and experiences you don’t get the luxury of slowing down. Your body stays in motion, your mind stays alert, and your spirit… gets pushed to the side.
I became a mom at 21. Still a baby myself, raising babies.
And then I kept going three beautiful treasures who deserved everything I felt I didn’t have. I wanted them to feel special. Seen. Celebrated. No matter what we were going through.
So I made it happen.
Life got harder. Responsibilities stacked. But I kept showing up, creating moments. My ex-husband and I filled our home with life parties, birthdays, holidays, laughter. We invited friends, their kids… we built a world where joy lived, even if it was just for a moment.
It looked like we were thriving.
And for a while, that was survival for me creating experiences so we didn’t have to sit in what was really going on.
But eventually, even that got exhausting.
Because survival doesn’t always look like struggle on the outside. Sometimes it looks like keeping up. Like performing. Like doing what you think you should be doing or having by a certain age.
By my mid-thirties, I was depressed.
And nobody knew.
I had mastered the art of “never let them see you sweat.” I wore it like armor. I carried it like truth.
But underneath that… I was tired. I wanted to live. I wanted to feel free. I wanted to experience the version of life I skipped over when I became a mother so young.
And that’s a complicated grief people don’t talk about.
Now I’m approaching 49, and when I tell you life was life-ing… I mean it.
And still, I was maintaining the image. Still showing up like everything was intact.
Until it wasn’t.
It all came crashing down.
And for the first time in a long time… I could breathe.
Because here’s what I’ve come to understand:
I am an expert at building something out of nothing.
But this time?
This “nothing” isn’t lack.
It isn’t survival.
It isn’t performance.
This time, I’m building from truth.
From alignment.
From peace.
From what I actually want.
And that changes everything.
Now, at almost 49, all of my kids are in their 20s… and they are incredible human beings.
And here’s something I didn’t expect I had to learn how to become a good parent to adults.
Because parenting doesn’t stop. It just changes form.
And if we’re being honest, most parents hurt their children in one way or another. Not always out of malice but out of patterns, conditioning, and things we simply didn’t know how to do differently at the time.
I had to face that truth within myself.
So I made a decision:
To change.
To heal the parts of me that needed healing.
To be honest about it even when it’s uncomfortable.
Especially then.
Because accountability hits different when it’s your children looking back at you… not as authority, but as individuals with their own experiences, their own truths.
And I don’t run from that.
I meet them there.
I remind them and myself often:
This is my first time being me…
just like it’s their first time being you.
We’re all learning in real time.
And there’s something beautiful about choosing to grow together instead of pretending we already got it right.