anxiety

Hope Is a Powerful Thing

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If you had asked me a year ago how I was doing, I probably would have smiled and said I was fine.

Most moms do.

We’re good at it.
At smiling.
At showing up.
At packing snacks, wiping tears, making dinner, remembering appointments, loving our babies with every ounce of our being… while quietly carrying things inside our own minds that nobody else can see.

The truth is, for a long time I haven’t felt fine.

Not in a dramatic, falling apart kind of way.
In the quieter way that’s harder to explain.

The kind where your brain never really shuts off.
Where you wake up already tired.
Where small things feel overwhelming and your mind feels like it’s constantly running in ten different directions at once.

I kept telling myself I could just push through it. That this is just what motherhood feels like sometimes. That being busy and being overwhelmed are basically part of the job description.

But eventually I had to be honest with myself.

White knuckling your way through life isn’t the same thing as living it.

So I did something that honestly took me a long time to do.

I started seeing a psychiatrist.

Even writing that out feels vulnerable. There’s still this strange stigma around mental health that makes it feel like admitting something is wrong with you. Like if you were just stronger, prayed harder, or more organized or more disciplined, you wouldn’t need help.

But our brains are organs. Just like our hearts and lungs and knees.

And sometimes they need help too.

After talking through everything, we decided to start a treatment plan and see if we can help my brain work the way it’s supposed to. It’s a process, and we’re still figuring out what works best. This isn’t my 1st rodeo with antidepressants or antianxiety medication, but I knew going on that shed throw some scary stuff at me.

Starting this step was scary.

What if nothing changes?
What if I still feel the same way?
What if I’ve been trying so hard for so long and this still doesn’t fix it?

But there’s another thought that keeps showing up, and it’s stronger than the fear.

Hope.

I have hope that things can get better.
Hope that the constant mental noise might quiet down.
Hope that I might wake up feeling rested instead of already behind.
Hope that I might feel like myself again.

Because if I’m being honest, I’m tired of feeling broken.

I’m tired of wondering why my brain sometimes works against me instead of with me. I’m tired of pretending everything is fine when inside it feels like I’m just trying to hold everything together.

I look at my child and I want to be the best version of myself for her. Not a perfect mom, but a present one. One whose mind isn’t constantly fighting itself.

And I know I’m not the only one walking around feeling this way.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve been struggling quietly too, let me say something I wish more people said out loud.

Getting help is not weakness.

It’s one of the bravest things you can do.

Taking care of your mental health doesn’t make you a bad mom, a bad partner, or a failure. It makes you someone who cares enough about your life and your family to fight for yourself.

I don’t know exactly what this journey will look like yet. Healing isn’t instant and it isn’t perfect. There will probably still be hard days.

But for the first time in a long time, I feel something I’ve been missing.

Hope.

And sometimes hope is the very first piece of healing.

Because the truth is this:

Sometimes the bravest thing a mother can do isn’t holding everything together for everyone else.

Sometimes the bravest thing she can do is finally admit she deserves to feel whole too.

Go hug your babies. Go hug your partners. Go hug a tree. Make a therapy appointment.

XOXOXO – Meig

The Night She Slept and I Didn’t

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Last night our daughter had a sleep study.

If you’ve never experienced one, imagine a tiny hospital room that feels somewhere between a hotel and a science lab. Dim lights. Quiet monitors. A narrow bed for your child and a parent bed that promises rest but never quite delivers it.

And then imagine a three year old with more wires attached to her than seems reasonable for such a small human.

Sensors in her hair.
Little sticky patches across her chest.
Wires trailing everywhere like she’d been temporarily recruited by NASA for a very important mission.

The techs were kind and gentle, explaining everything in that calm voice people who work with children somehow master. They measured her head, parted her curls, and glued little electrodes carefully along her scalp.

My brave girl sat there taking it all in.

But the moment that melted my heart was when the tech let her decorate her lovies too. She got to put stickers and pretend wires on them so they could have a sleep study right along with her. Suddenly it wasn’t something happening to her. It was something they were all doing together.

By the end of it, her stuffed animals looked like they had their own medical charts.

And she was thrilled.

When everything was finally hooked up, she looked like the world’s cutest science experiment.

Then the lights went out.

The whole goal of a sleep study is simple. They want your child to sleep normally so they can observe what happens through the night. Breathing patterns. Brain waves. Oxygen levels. Movement.

The reason we were there in the first place is because of something we’ve been watching for a while. Mouth breathing. Restless sleep. The quiet little worries that sit in the back of a parent’s mind when you notice your child never quite seems to breathe the way you think they should.

Doctors suspect her adenoids may be part of the story.

So the machines watched.

And my girl?

She slept beautifully.

Peacefully.
Deeply.
Like the room wasn’t full of blinking lights and softly humming machines.

Meanwhile, I did what mothers do best.

I watched.

I watched the little monitors glow in the dark.
I watched the wires rise and fall with her breathing.
I listened to every sleepy whine and tiny murmur that slipped out of her dreams.

Every time she shifted, I wondered if the wires were bothering her.

Every time she sighed, I wondered if she was breathing well.

Every flash of a light made me glance up again.

Sleep studies are meant to monitor children, but somewhere around two in the morning I realized they’re a study in parenthood too.

Because parenting is a lot like that quiet room.

You sit in the dark while they sleep, listening, watching, hoping their little bodies are doing exactly what they’re meant to do.

Holding the worry so they don’t have to.

Around dawn she started to stir, curls wild, wires still gently taped in place. When they finally removed everything she looked so proud of herself, like she had just completed the most important job in the world.

And honestly, she had.

For being such an amazing patient, the tech brought her a little prize. A white owl stuffed animal and some dinosaur toys to take home.

She clutched them like treasure.

Proof of her bravery.

Proof that sometimes even the smallest people can handle big things.

She walked out of that hospital happy, chatting about her owl and dinosaurs like the whole experience had been one grand adventure.

Meanwhile, I walked out feeling like I had pulled an all night shift in the world’s quietest command center.

But if a night of watching wires and blinking lights helps us understand her sleep, helps her breathe easier, helps her rest more peacefully in the years ahead, then it was a night well spent.

Because motherhood is often exactly that.

Sometimes they sleep.

And sometimes we stay awake loving them.

Happy Monday after a time change. May your caffeine be strong and your child be happy.

Meig

3 Days Before Surgery

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Packing for Dallas at Midnight: A Moment of Clarity in the Chaos

It’s midnight, and I’m still packing for Dallas. I started around 9 PM, and I’ve managed to get one suitcase packed—though even that feels incomplete.

I can’t help but wonder: why am I moving so slowly? Why can’t I focus on this simple task?

The answer seems to lie in the clash between my racing thoughts and my sluggish body. The louder my brain gets, the slower my hands move. It’s as though the more anxious I feel, the less capable I am of doing anything at all. I glance at the baby monitor. There she is—my sweet girl, sound asleep in her crib, as peaceful as she can be. It’s a stark contrast to the chaos swirling in my mind.

Intrusive thoughts keep flooding in. I wish there were a mute button for my brain, just something to stop the noise for a few minutes so I can breathe.

What makes it worse, though, is when people ask me how I’m doing. How do you answer when you feel like you’re barely keeping it together? I’m not eating much. I’m staying up late because my brain is too loud to sleep. When I do sleep, it’s fitful and haunted by nightmares that leave me waking up in a sweaty panic. I’m terrified of the future, of what’s to come. I can’t think straight, I can’t focus, and the simplest tasks feel impossible—like packing a bag.

Packing, in particular, feels like a painful reminder that this isn’t just some nightmare. This is real. It’s been real ever since our daughter’s diagnosis, the day we saw the pediatric orthopedic surgeon for the first time. But I’ve been able to push it to the back of my mind, to pretend for a while that it isn’t happening. It’s easier that way. I’ve been dissociating, going through the motions of day-to-day life, trying to enjoy the small moments. We took her to the zoo for the first time, and I allowed myself to believe everything was okay, if only for a few hours.

But now, with every item I fold and tuck into the suitcase, it hits me all over again. This is happening. And I don’t know how to make sense of it all.

I guess, for now, I’ll go finish packing. But I don’t think I’ll be able to ignore it much longer.