What the Hell Was That?

You were in the middle of something that mattered. Really mattered. And someone walked into the room. And the size of what came up in you did not come close to matching the size of what actually happened. And then, somewhere in the aftermath, you heard yourself. And a small, tired voice in the back of your head asked: what the hell was that?

Before you go one inch deeper into the shame spiral you are probably already halfway down, I need you to know something.

That reaction was not you being a monster. That reaction was information.

Here is your permission slip, and I mean it. You are allowed to have had that reaction and not hate yourself for it. Both things get to be true at the same time. It was too big, AND you are not broken. Those are not in conflict. That is the whole point.

Because I already know the objection. It is the same one I throw at myself. “But it was nothing. It was literally nothing. So what is wrong with me that nothing set me off like that?”

Nothing is wrong with you. The bigness is the clue. A reaction that enormous over something that tiny is not pointing at the tiny thing. It is pointing at something older, heavier, and, this is the part that got me, something that has nothing to do with today.

I could hand you the whole science of it right here. What is actually happening in your body, why it hits moms especially, what to do about it. I put every bit of that on the website, on purpose, because you deserve the real version and not a slogan.

(The quality bar around here is simple: I will not hand you a nine dollar candle and call it healing. If I am going to take up room in your inbox, it is going to be true.)

But the one thing I want you to walk out with, the thing I would tattoo on the inside of every exhausted mother’s wrist, is this.

The reaction that is too big for the moment is almost never about the moment.

It is an old alarm, wired a long time ago, going off over a threat that is not actually here. You built that alarm because at some point it kept you safe. It is not malfunctioning. It is just still running, years after the fire it was built for went out.

So here is my actual ask, and it is small. The next time it happens, and it will, do not reach for the shame. Reach for the question. What the hell was that? Get curious instead of cruel. That question is a door. I walked through it sitting in my own kitchen, and I wrote down everything I found on the other side. It is here when you want it:

What the Hell Was That? (full essay)

And because I do not get to make you do the brave thing without doing it first:

I was on the phone with our attorney, a call with a dollar sign on every minute. Kevin walked in to put clothes away. Then he had the audacity, the sheer nerve, to want to sit down next to me. And I lost my mind. Silently, because I was on the phone, but completely. Over my husband wanting to be near me. I build a company that sells nervous system restoration for a living, and I came apart because a good man wanted to sit on the couch. I am not the woman who has this handled. I am the woman figuring it out one soak at a time, right here next to you.

If you want the honest version of coming back to yourself while you carry the entire world, the stuff I only say here, stay with me.

xoxo, Heather