This time last year I was in the weeds

Everyday we would race out the front door at 7:50 am, after much stress and lunch-packing, to a school that Bernadette struggled to stay awake at and a dayhome in which Henry cried at every drop off. Then I would go to work for a couple of hours, leaving by 2pm to pick them all up but they were often suffering from something called after-school restraint collapse, a "normal" reaction to the stimuli at school and childcare which often resulted in tears and meltdowns.

Each week for no reason I could figure out, Bernadette would have a huge emotional breakdown that often turned violent and caused much distress to our family. No one would eat what I put in front of them, we were sick every other week, and Covid was still a thing causing us stress.

The thing is, I know I'm a highly sensitive person, I figured it out as an adult. But what I didn't know was that the status quo wasn't necessarily built with me in mind. I make many accommodations in a day for the way life messes with my nervous system, but I didn't really think I could change the design of my bigger world, until two people in my life pointed out that the way things are, are not the way they have to be. 

Carly Power was the first person to say, maybe the problem isn't that you're not a good enough Mom to have everyone fed and dressed and out the door for school, maybe the problem is that 7:45am in the middle of winter is a terrible feeling; Is there a school that starts later?

A simple enough question.

Her kindergarten teacher was the other person who made a comment that would stick with me for many months. She appreciated how involved I was with her learning, leaned in and said "You're going to homeschool, aren't you?"
 
So here we are, a year later and many of the stresses have been one by one, knocked away from our life. I'm not surprised the problem was the status quo, I've always felt strongly about many parts of society that we're expected to accept blindly. I thought I was one of many but with each passing day, as the parking lots grow and the problems multiply, I wonder if I'm the minority. 

Now we wake when we want, and if I have to spend 20 minutes getting knots out of Bernadettes hair, so be it. It won't make or break us. I only make lunches 2 days a week now, everything home-made the other days, which fills me with relief given the processed food that was being consumed previously.