Belong To Yourself First

This piece started with someone else's words and ended up somewhere very personal. Ryan Vet wrote a beautiful article about motherhood and the erosion of community that stopped me in my tracks. I had too many thoughts for a comment. So I wrote this instead. Below is my full response — and if you'd rather watch me talk through it unscripted, the video is waiting for you at the bottom.

Isolation hits differently when you're raising a child with special needs.

As a mother of a child with special needs, I can speak to it personally. The low-level shame that turns up from looks (potential or real). The embarrassment siblings can feel when out with a child whose behavior is inappropriate. Not finding folks easily who understand the particular challenges (my son didn’t make a verbal request to me until he was almost 6). Not hearing the “I love yous”, “hey mom”, “doggy”. 

It’s a special kind of pain. 

Ryan Vet recently released an article exploring some of the challenges of motherhood in our modern world. (If you didn’t read it, please do, it’s fantastic)  I had so many thoughts and feelings about it, a comment on his post wouldn’t have allowed me the space. Reading it was profoundly touching. An ache of wanting to shake people to help them understand the struggle, and while Ryan’s piece doesn’t delineate between mothers of typically developing children and those with special needs, I still felt a deep sense of exhaustion reading. Because while no mother (indeed any parent) ever really stops caring for their child, my son will be dependent on me in some way the remainder of my life. In his article, Ryan touches on many facets of the struggle of motherhood, honoring our approaching holiday, but what stood out to me was the concept of ‘it takes a village’ to raise a child. And how the push for modern ‘convenience’ has isolated us in astonishing ways. 

Those stats don’t just touch parents; they are everywhere. Consider that 4 in 10 American adults now report feeling lonely — up from 35% in 2010. Which means we can’t blame COVID. It can become an excuse to say COVID was the problem. It isn’t. COVID just magnified an already alarming trend. 

So what does the personal responsibility expert have to say about this? 

Y’all - personal responsibility is what allows us to connect better with others. And as a mother, it is what allowed me to show up better as a mother, too. If you don’t get straight with yourself, everything you touch suffers. 

You can’t do connection well if you aren’t practicing self-leadership. And that isn’t intended to be a cliched eye-roll, fluff sentiment. Nor is it a declaration that your needs matter more than others, sometimes - they don’t. 

It’s just a fact.

Personal responsibility, as I talk about it, centers around three areas of life: being, doing, and belonging. We need skills in each of these areas to move through them effectively, and when those skills are familiar to you and you hold yourself accountable to them, you can show up ready for rich, deep connection with others. 

To ‘be’ well, you need to know and understand how to keep your nervous system stable. This is bigger than stress; it’s any activation of the nervous system. Physiological flooding is partially defined by a heart rate that exceeds 100bpm and triggers ‘fight or flight’. When that happens, we lose the capacity of our prefrontal cortex, which makes it infinitely more difficult to express empathy, compassion, rational thought, and all necessary components for healthy co-regulation and psychological safety. It means when you aren’t stable, you can hurt people. 

To ‘belong’ well, you need to get radically honest about your values, your priorities, and integrate yourself into your life. You need purpose and why. 

You need to belong to yourself. 

When you have a clear ‘why’ your prefrontal cortex helps your stress system know when to relax. It helps you remember you are safe, that stress is worth experiencing, so it doesn’t hijack the whole system. Without a clear purpose or why people can unintentionally signal to others that they aren’t ‘safe’ to be with. This isn’t behavior or conscience. It’s just this drained feeling others experience when being in your presence. It puts undefined pressure on the connection. 

It makes it more difficult to co-regulate. Your ability to be integrated is critical to your ability to not only feel better about yourself but also feel safe to others. 

And ‘doing’ well is what keeps everything going. It’s the self-discipline you rely on to execute on what you know you need to keep your system running. It’s going to bed on time and not binging a show until 12 am. It’s creating a practice to find some peace, meditation, journaling, forest bathing. It’s maintaining boundaries for yourself with the people in your life, you know, you need to. Self-discipline is your highest form of self-love.

All of that is what it means to take ownership of yourself. And when you are leading well yourself, you have the energy to reach out to others. Show up for others. Be with others. 

And the isolation lessens. 

Ryan’s article was a validation of a shared experience so many of us have. And yet, it also points to our ability to make a change to it. When we make the decision to be serious about taking care of ourselves in a way that isn’t about bubble baths and defending our ‘needs’ above all else, but to help us be capable of reconnecting with our world and our lives. 

My story pivots when I ended up on a bathroom floor. 

When the isolation and pressure of being a mother to a special needs child broke me. And I learned how many of our struggles are self-imposed simply because we have forgotten how to really show up for ourselves. Not so we can be more self-reliant, but so we can engage better with others. 

This is the work we all face. And it doesn’t stay in one corner of your life - it integrates into all of it.

Want an unscripted discussion? Video below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhcK70lBVI