To the Women Who Held It Together (Until They Couldn’t)

This Mother's Day, I'm not writing a tribute. I'm writing a truth.

For the women who held:

The household

The job

The team

The calendar

The doctor appointments

The collapse

The silence

For the women who didn't know they were neurodivergent until everything broke. For the mothers who masked so well, no one knew they were drowning. Not even them.

This is for the woman who kept showing up with cracked sleep and blistered nerves, who thought the anxiety was just her personality and the exhaustion was just adulthood. This is for the woman who hit perimenopause and didn't recognize herself anymore—because no one told her what would happen when the hormones dropped and the masks shattered.

It's not just burnout. It's not just hormones.

It's a system that never studied us. A workforce that never saw us. A medical establishment that still doesn't understand us. And a society that asked us to be everything for everyone—while giving us almost nothing that reflects who we actually are.

This isn't about motherhood. It's about mothering in a world that never made space for your truth.

To the women who cracked the system open with their honesty—thank you. I found myself in your stories. You made it safe to stop performing. You helped me realize I wasn't broken. I was just unaccommodated.

If you're reading this and nodding: I see you. You're not alone. You're not too much. You were just never meant to carry all of this without support.

Related:

The Invisible Crisis: Neurodivergent Women, Hormonal Transitions & Systemic Burnout (Issue Paper)