Long before I became the mother to my two autistic littles with their complex needs, I was the girl who cried with anxiety in the car one time right before cheer camp started, and then blew the whistle to start squad warm-ups only minutes later. Because as the Captain, showing up halfway was never even an option for me. I learned very early how to swallow the feeling and perform the role anyway... And for a long time …I genuinely believed that was “strength”. Wasn’t it?..

THEN, motherhood reshaped by autism and needs arrived and turned that ONE skill into my entire existence:

Meltdowns before 9 AM. Therapy appointments stacked across the week. Researching interventions at midnight, and then waking up to do it all over again. Years of dark and sticky mental-health seasons that didn’t announce themselves (and didn’t leave quickly, either). And somewhere in the middle of all that functioning… I quietly stopped existing as a person and started existing as a system.

I’ve said it before on here, and it’s still the truest thing I know:

“I can love my children fiercely, advocate for them relentlessly, and STILL need something that’s just mine…”

THAT realization was the beginning of my way out. Not a dramatic rescue. Not a retreat I couldn’t afford anyway... A slow, honest, very unglamorous Exit…

…And I want to hand you the WHOLE map today.

You MIGHT Be in Survival Mode If…

(Screenshot this one. Send it to the mom who needs it most.)

✅ You can’t remember the last thing you did just because you wanted to.

✅ Your body braces for the day before your eyes are even fully open in the morning.

✅ “How are you?..” makes you tear up… SO, you’ve stopped letting people ask.

✅ You know your child’s therapy schedule by heart, but NOT when you last saw your own doctor… (This one is LOUD for me!)

✅ Rest doesn’t restore you... It just pauses the depletion.

✅ You’re running on caffeine, adrenaline, and the 14 minutes after bedtime.

✅ You LOVE your life… And you quietly dread it, too.

✅ When someone asks you what you enjoy, your mind goes completely blank.

If you nodded at three or more, Mom… I see you... And none of this means you’re failing.

What Survival Mode Actually Is (And Why Willpower Won’t Get You Out)

Survival Mode isn’t a character flaw… It’s a nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do when the demands on it never let up: narrowing your whole world down to what’s URGENT, so you can keep everyone fed, safe, and functional…

It kept you going. It may have even genuinely kept your family afloat through the diagnosis, the waitlists, the school calls, the hardest years…

Survival Mode kept you alive. It was NEVER meant to be where you live…

And here’s the thing nobody tells you: you can’t “white-knuckle” your way out of it.

Most advice (“just make time for self-care!”, “wake up an hour earlier!”) is built for a conventional shape of life... Ours has a completely different shape. Using those tools here isn’t laziness or ingratitude. It’s simply using the wrong map for this terrain.

SO: let’s use a different map…

🪄 A little alchemy for rebuilding your life…

Little Alchemies is written in the in-between moments: waiting rooms, the five minutes after bedtime, whenever quiet actually arrives… Consider coming along to radically choose yourself with the rest of us.

Subscribe now

The Survival Mode Exit Map

Four phases. NOT a ladder you climb once, but a doorway you’ll walk back through as many times as you need to…

They’re the same four phases I built into my free Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook, so if one of them catches you, you can go much deeper on it there… Each has one real-life example from my own home, and one small thing to try.

Grab The Digital Tool!

Phase I: Sacred Awareness

Before you can leave Survival Mode, you have to actually SEE it… not judge it, not fix it yet, just witness it. Where does it show up in your day? And what is it quietly costing you?..

This is SACRED work because it’s the first time in a long time that someone is paying close attention to you… Even if that someone is… “only you”.

What It Looks Like In Real Life:

Drawing from my days as an Online Business Manager, I learned that you can’t change a workflow you’ve never mapped… So I started noticing the specific moments my days got swallowed whole: the meltdowns before 9 AM, the therapy appointments stacked across the week, the 11 p.m. research spirals… Seeing them on paper didn’t make them lighter. It made them REAL… And real things can be worked with.

TRY THIS: For three days, jot down the moments your day disappears. Next to each, write one word for what it costs you (sleep, patience, joy, your body, your own voice). Then, ask of everything on that list: “Is this necessary weight… or just weight?”

Phase II: Beautiful Audacity

Here’s the part Survival Mode makes you forget: You are allowed to want things... NOT just for your children. For yourself. Without apology, without earning it first, and without waiting until everyone else’s needs are fully met (because, Mom, that day is NOT coming)…

It takes a truly beautiful kind of audacity to want again after years of only surviving... That’s exactly why it matters here.

What It Looks Like In Real Life:

When I finally started pouring time into my own projects and passions again… the guilt arrived right on schedule. Then one day I considered the fact that my husband likely doesn’t feel guilty when he shuts himself inside our home office for 40+ hours a week to do his work...

The feelings relented, just a little. And that “little” was the doorway.

TRY THIS: Write yourself a Permission Slip, and actually sign it:

“I, , give myself permission to want , without apology…”

Keep it somewhere you’ll see it.

Phase III: Intentional Alignment

This is where wanting becomes doing… but gently.

Not a total life overhaul (you don’t have the capacity for one, and you shouldn’t need it). One small, doable next step that moves your real life even one inch closer to The Thing you just gave yourself permission to want.

Alignment also means “softening the edges”… (OR, clearing away what isn’t part of your “necessary weight”, so that there’s room for that one small step to fit.)

What It Looks Like In Real Life:

I hand every task I can to systems: Grocery delivery instead of the store with two children in tow. Automatic bill pay. A life-organizer app (like the one I LOVE to use, called Liveit!) holding all of the appointment reminders, medication schedules, and therapy tracking so my brain doesn’t have to. And with the room that frees up… I protect one small thing that’s mine: Writing at an open bedroom window before the day officially starts, instead of just scrolling.

TRY THIS: Take your list from Phase I and mark each item Delegate, Delay, or Drop. Act on just ONE of each. Then, choose a single ten-minute step toward your Permission Slip, and put it on tomorrow.

Phase IV: Anchoring Affirmations

You will be pulled back. The old guilt WILL get loud again, usually on the hardest days, right when you need yourself the most. So, the final phase isn’t another task. It’s a short list of truths to return to… Anchors that hold when your nervous system wants to drag you back under.

What It Looks Like In Real Life:

These are a few of mine, the ones I come back to most:

“I can love my children fiercely, advocate for them relentlessly, and STILL need something that’s just mine.”

“I am not lazy. I am not dramatic. I am a woman who has been carrying more than any one person should carry alone.”

“Survival Mode kept me alive. It was NEVER meant to be where I live.”

“I don’t have to be present all the time. I only have to keep coming back.”

TRY THIS: Write three anchors of your own, in your own words. Put them where Survival Mode usually finds you: the bathroom mirror, your phone lock screen, the car visor, the inside of the kitchen cabinet you open first every morning.

Your First Seven Days Out

Even if you ONLY do this part… you still will have really begun…

One small step a day, nothing more:

📅 Day 1 — Name it.

(Sacred Awareness) Say it out loud or write it down: “I’m in Survival Mode, and I want out.” Naming it is the first act of leaving.

📅 Day 2 — Map where your day disappears.

(Sacred Awareness) Note the swallowed moments and what each one costs you.

📅 Day 3 — Want something out loud.

(Beautiful Audacity) One thing, just for you. Say it to someone, or write it where you’ll see it.

📅 Day 4 — Sign your Permission Slip.

(Beautiful Audacity) Yes, actually sign it.

📅 Day 5 — Delegate, delay, or drop.

(Intentional Alignment) Act on one item from each column.

📅 Day 6 — Take one ten-minute step.

(Intentional Alignment) Toward the thing you gave yourself permission to want.

📅 Day 7 — Write your three anchors.

(Anchoring Affirmations) Put them where Survival Mode usually finds you. Then choose one ordinary moment today and fully arrive in it.

You will drift back into Survival Mode. Probably this month... Maybe this week. That isn’t failure, Mom. The return is the actual practice. Every time you notice you’ve slipped back into managing instead of living, you simply walk back through the doorway.

An Open Invitation:

You are not behind. You’re not broken. You’ve been SURVIVING a life that would have flattened most people, and doing it with love…

But you were never meant to only “survive” it…

If you want to go deeper than this post can, I built the Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook for exactly this. It’s a free, guided, interactive workbook I created that walks you through building your own personal Exit Plan, step by step, at your own pace.

They’re the same four phases I built into my free Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook, so if one of them catches you, you can go much deeper on it there. Each has one real-life example from my own home, and one small thing to try.

And it’s YOURS right here:

Little Alchemies

Access Your FREE Guided, Interactive Digital Workbook!

Open Your FREE Guided, Interactive Digital Workbook…

Read more

2 years ago · 2 likes

…And if this map helps you even a little, please do one thing for me: Forward it to one mom you know who’s STILL in it. The one who goes quiet when you ask how she’s doing. She may not ask you for it… but, she WILL keep it.

Share

If this resonated, if something here named something you have been living, I’d LOVE to know: The reply button is always open, and I read everything.

THAT is the whole invitation…

With MUCH warmth,

Cheniece Patrick ♡

P.S. If this found its way to you from a friend or a late-night search, the Little Alchemies Letter Circle is where I write to Moms like us: honest letters, small rituals, and an inbox-sized moment of company. Come in, sit down, and stay awhile…

…AND if you’d like to sit with other Moms who understand this life from the inside, the (private) reader Group Chat is always FREE to join!..

A Few Honest Questions:

❓ What is Survival Mode for moms?

Survival Mode is a stress state where your nervous system narrows your focus to what’s urgent: keeping everyone fed, safe, and functioning. It’s common for autism and special needs moms because the demands rarely let up. It isn’t a character flaw. But living there long-term leads to exhaustion, numbness, and losing touch with who you are.

❓ How do I know if I’m in Survival Mode?

Common signs include rest that doesn’t restore you, bracing for the day before you’re fully awake, not remembering what you enjoy, and loving your life while quietly dreading it. If several of these feel familiar, you’re likely in Survival Mode… and you’re far from alone.

❓ How long does it take to get out of Survival Mode?

There’s no set timeline, and it isn’t a straight line. Most moms move in and out of it, especially during hard seasons... Small, consistent steps, like reducing unnecessary obligations and protecting ten minutes a day for yourself, can begin shifting things within weeks... The REAL practice is noticing when you’ve slipped back and returning, again and again.

Little Alchemies is more than just another lifestyle blog or newsletter about parenting special needs and neurodivergent children; it’s a mom’s real life personal journal and a sanctuary for other mothers and women inhabiting their lives again after Survival Mode. Through honest essays, gentle prompts, and an intentional community, you’ll rediscover your creativity, identity, and inner calm.

TRANSMUTE the weight of living into GOLD…

YOUR SPONSORED MESSAGE

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
My audience is devoted, intentional, and always hungry for resources that actually matter. I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.

🫱🏻‍🫲🏼 Ad Packages

Hi Love,

You made it inside. Take a breath. You don’t have to do anything with that breath yet… just notice that you took it, on purpose, for you.

This post is your home base. Everything in Her Arcane Archive lives here, and I’ll keep it updated every time something new lands on the shelf. Bookmark it, star it, screenshot it. Whatever your brain needs.

How the Archive works

Every month, a members-only letter arrives in your inbox: one deeper piece with a soulwork prompt for the season you’re in.

Every season, a new tool drops: an interactive workbook, a reflection companion, or a tiny ritual, made for that stretch of the year. Each one comes with a .PDF companion and saves as you go.

And everything stays. Nothing here expires, nobody’s grading you, and there’s no such thing as falling behind. The tools will wait for you exactly where you left them.

Your Archive shelf

Here’s everything that’s already yours… Tap on ANY button to access its tool:

Read more

This letter first appeared on my personal site’s blog RIGHT HERE…

I’ve been considering the word “inhabitable” for longer than is reasonable or necessary…

It had its conception in the name of my blog, as this felt more close to the truth than anything else regarding the tides of my inner world… But the more that I sit with this word (because that’s just the sort of thing I do), the more I come to realize that it is far more than just a word or even a name. It is a whole philosophy. A practice. A question I keep asking myself on the ordinary days that make up most of a life, the ones without dramatic movement or neat narratives or anything else worth posting about… These are the quiet, unremarkable, fully human days when the following question matters most and gets asked the least:

“Am I actually inhabiting this life of mine? Or am I just getting through it?…”

And we all do know the difference between those two, I think. We are all familiar with the wonderful experience of remaining fully present within our bodies and our thoughts while being alive in an expanded, fully-expressed way. And then we all know what it means to simply survive the hours, check the boxes, manage the schedule and keep everyone fed and functional while somewhere underneath it all the truest version of ourselves sits in a quiet room, waiting for us to come back and visit her…

I’ve spent a long, long time in that second mode. I am still in it more than I would like to admit. But I am learning slowly and imperfectly (in public) to become someone I did not originally plan to be, and what it actually means to inhabit the life I have… Not the life I imagined, but this real one that I own.

You cannot inhabit the life you planned on having… That life does not exist. You can grieve it (and I passionately believe in grieving it, honestly and without rushing the process), but you cannot live inside it. It is not available for habitation. The only life available for inhabiting is the one you are already in.

And I know how that sounds to the autism and special needs mom who is reading this in a therapy waiting room or a hospital lobby or the parking lot of a school that has called her for the third time this week about her child’s behavior… I know how it sounds to the woman who is somewhere in the raw, disorienting early days after a diagnosis both confirmed her worst fears and rearranged everything she thought she knew about her child and her future and herself. I know how uncomfortably it lands when you are in the middle of a season that is asking everything of you and you are not entirely sure if you have anything more to give.

Inhabit this?.. The first instinct is to laugh. Or cry. Often both.

But I mean something specific by inhabiting. I don’t mean enjoying every moment, arriving at some state of curated contentment where the hard things stop being hard, or assuming the toxic positivity version of your life where you are instructed to be grateful for what you have and then left to figure out how to do exactly that while simultaneously surviving the day…

I thankfully mean something more quietly attainable than that, more interior, more honest:

To inhabit your life means to consciously be engaged inside of it… It is to deliberately be aware of the gift within the current moment that you are assuming without having your thoughts orbit along tomorrow’s duties and yesterday’s doubts as you passively occupy space until bedtime. It’s the difference between “experiencing” your life and simply “managing” it reactively as it comes at you.

We women are very good at managing things. Most of us who are raising children with significant needs have become exceedingly competent managers of our own lives in the eyes of society: the schedules, the systems, the contingency plans for the contingency plans, the colossal cognitive load of keeping everything running… We manage these things beautifully, even. We just sometimes forget to also live the thing we are managing.

Inhabiting is the living part. And it looks different for every woman.

For me, this has looked like sitting on the floor among my two children while we all interact with each other instead of clinically observing them while standing in the doorway, leaving my cell phone in a dedicated spot in a different room (with the ringer still audible) because I value being mentally present where I am located physically, writing this Journal entry at an open bedroom window before the day officially starts instead of scrolling frivolous content before the rest of the household wakes up.

These are simple things. Embarrassingly small things, some of them. But the accumulation of small presences such as these is what inhabiting is made of at its root. It isn’t grand. It isn’t even a personal transformation you complete once and then maintain. It is a practice you are welcome to return to, again and again, every time you notice that you have drifted into managing your life instead of living it.

The Doorway Back In

Again, inhabiting is not a state you achieve. It is a doorway you keep finding, and keep walking through, as many times as necessary. And this doorway can look differently depending on the day and the person navigating it. Somedays it might be a deliberate practice: five minutes of sitting quietly before the house wakes up, a grounding exercise, a journal page, a slow walk around the block that has nothing to do with steps counted. Other times it might look like an even smaller moment than that: taking a single stabilizing breath, breaking from your work just to look at your child’s face, stopping yourself from rehearsing tomorrow’s conversations to actully taste your coffee before you come back to the present moment without any drama or self-criticism. The return is the actual practice here. It’s NOT the sustained uninterrupted presence, which is a fantasy. And coming back is just the repeated, ordinary return to the life that is actually happening for you, in the body you are actually living in, on the specific unremarkable day that is actually yours.

There is something almost radical about that in our society that is always pointing somewhere else on the outside. Towards the next milestone, the healed future self, the season when things will finally be easier… Inhabiting instead says: here. Now. This. The season you are in, with everything it is, including: the hard parts, the unresolved parts and even the parts that are still being transmuted into something you currently don’t have the language for.

This is your life. And it is available to be lived and not just managed right now.

And one of the things that inhabiting your life requires (and I want to name this directly because I think it is the part that takes the longest and matters the most) is having a self to come home to…

NOT a finished self and definitely not the self you were before the diagnosis or the self you will be when this season passes. Just the self that is here now, still becoming, still finding her way, still worth knowing. That self is the one who does the actual inhabiting. She is the one who comes back, again and again, to the doorway. She is the one worth the tending…

She is the reason why my publication exists. Little Alchemies was built around this type of sacred work. Not the external management of a caregiving life, because there are plenty of resources for that (and most of them are genuinely useful). But the interior work. The slow, honest, often uncomfortable work of staying a person with an inner life inside an un-chosen role that can quietly consume every available corner of you if you let it.

If you have lost track of her, if she has gone quiet somewhere among the diagnosis paperwork and the Survival Mode and the years of giving everything to everyone else, she is not gone. She is still in there, waiting in the way that True things wait. Patient. Persistent. A little dusty maybe. But present.

If this resonated, if something here named something you have been living, I’d love to know. The reply button is always open, and I read everything.

And if you have not yet joined the Little Alchemies letter circle, the door is open. Come in, sit down, and stay awhile.

With MUCH warmth,

Cheniece Patrick ♡

Current Resources

Little Alchemies is more than just another lifestyle blog or newsletter about parenting special needs and neurodivergent children; it’s a mom’s real life personal journal and a sanctuary for other mothers and women inhabiting their lives again after Survival Mode. Through honest essays, gentle prompts, and an intentional community, you’ll rediscover your creativity, identity, and inner calm.

TRANSMUTE the weight of living into GOLD…

Subscribe now

YOUR SPONSORED MESSAGE

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
My audience is devoted, intentional, and always hungry for resources that actually matter. I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.

🫱🏻‍🫲🏼 Ad Packages

I’m not going to apologize for the silence. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think I owe you sorry — I think I owe you the truth of where I actually was, which is the better trade.

The truth is: we moved.

We’re settled now into one of the newest homes in our new neighborhood, and I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying it because of how strange it still feels to type. The cats — all three of my girls, plus four surprise kittens none of us were expecting — adjusted before we did. The kids ran room to room testing every light switch before a single piece of furniture came in, leaving fingerprints on everything, which is exactly as it should be. We’re still unpacking. Still in that in-between stretch of turning a new space into one we actually inhabit, not just occupy… but enjoying even that part, the slow work of it.

Here’s the piece I actually sat down to tell you, though…

For most of my marriage, home has meant something else entirely. Rentals. What we could afford. And I say that with pride, not for sympathy — because growing up a poor Black girl in Mississippi, raised by a single mother doing her best by me and my two younger brothers in the older, rougher part of town, is exactly what taught me the difference between the price of a thing and the value of it. I’m not loyal to brands. I don’t chase them. I’d rather eat well than fill a closet — one good bag, maybe, but the rest is just noise to me. None of that is a judgment on anyone who wants differently. It’s just the woman that upbringing made, and for the most part, I love her.

For the most part. I’ll also tell you, because this is THAT kind of letter: I’ve lived through more than one depressive episode. A sticky kind, the sort that doesn’t announce itself and doesn’t leave quickly either. What’s pulled me out of it, more than once now, has been going back to my writing — this writing, actually. The letters I write to you.

That’s really the whole reason this space exists the way it does — not a marketing email, not another inbox of sales and promotions, but something closer to a handwritten letter, sent only when I have something worth saying, to the small, warm community of women I’ve gathered here.

If you’re reading this and you’re not yet part of this Letter Circle, the door’s open at cheniece.com/newsletter — and everything I’ve written before this is sitting in the archive, waiting, if you ever want to go back.

This one actually started as a voice memo, so if you’d rather hear it than read it — kid stimming, rambling, cat interrupting the recording and all — the podcast version is up above too.

Listen to this letter →

I have a cat currently attempting to leave this office because my husband isn’t in it to give her the attention she’d prefer, so I’ll let her go and get back to the rest of my week. I’m glad to be back in your inbox. I mean that plainly, and I mean it for each of you.

Episode Overview:

This episode picks up where the silence left off. I talk about our move into a new home, what “home” has actually meant across most of my marriage, the Mississippi upbringing that shaped how I hold money and value, and a depressive episode I’ve lived through more than once — plus the unglamorous, ongoing practice that’s helped pull me out of it every time. This is me handing you the truth instead of an apology.

What’s Inside:

• Why I stopped apologizing for silence, and what I think I owe you instead

• Growing up a poor Black girl in Mississippi, and what that taught me about price versus value

• The sticky kind of depressive episode that doesn’t announce itself — and doesn’t leave quickly either

• Why this space exists as a letter, not a marketing email

Featured Insights:

“I don’t think I owe you sorry — I think I owe you the truth of where I actually was, which is the better trade.”

“What’s pulled me out of it, more than once now, has been going back to my writing. This writing, actually. The letters I write to you.”

Join the Conversation:

Share your experience by leaving a comment. Your message may be featured in an upcoming episode (anonymously). Your experiences matter and help other parents feel less alone.

The Little Alchemies podcast celebrates the complex journey of raising neurodivergent and special needs children while reclaiming our identities beyond caregiving. Hosted by Cheniece, mother of two autistic children and advocate for parent well-being.

Subscribe now

· ◆ ·

With MUCH warmth,

Cheniece Patrick ♡

P.S. — Your 🎁 Resources link lives inside every letter I send you. It is how you find everything that has ever been created for this community — organized, searchable, and always there whenever you need it. You never have to hunt for anything twice.

✦ FIND OUR COMMUNITY ✦

Letters · The Lounge · The Refinery

Little Alchemies is more than just another lifestyle blog or newsletter about parenting special needs and neurodivergent children; it’s a mom’s real life personal journal and a sanctuary for other mothers and women inhabiting their lives again after Survival Mode. Through honest essays, gentle prompts, and an intentional community, you’ll rediscover your creativity, identity, and inner calm.

TRANSMUTE the weight of living into GOLD…

YOUR SPONSORED MESSAGE:

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
My audience is devoted, intentional, and always hungry for resources that actually matter. I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.

🫱🏻‍🫲🏼 Ad Packages

This letter first appeared on my personal site’s blog RIGHT HERE…

I KNOW Your Name…

Autism or special needs Mom: We may haven’t met personally before, but I don’t have to know what your parents named you to call you out in this post:

I MEAN that I can open you up ALL of the way deep down to your insides right now by addressing you by the emotion you’re currently holding (and and trying to force down) inside of yourself this very moment (BUT have been too afraid to say out loud before):

“I HATE my life…”

…Am I CLOSE, Mom, or am I just CORRECT?… (..And did I just hear you jaggedly EXHALE through the screen after reading that right now?.. I can’t be too sure about it.)

NOW, allow me to continue recognizing just who you are:

“If I knew then what I know now… My G-d. Life doesn’t even feel REAL to me anymore… I LOVE my child more than I have ever loved anything else, BUT I do also quietly dread my own life sometimes…”

THAT’S who you are, isn’t it? I know… And I’m currently smiling, NOT because I’m here holding you in judgement, but because I’m now sharing with you that you’re NOT nearly alone in this. ALL of the above (and more) reveals exactly who I am too… And it’s not even your failing. It is NOT a character flaw.

I also happen to know that these aren’t just some dramatic topical statements. They’re the realizations that you arrive at over and over again in the small, quiet moments where something in you goes very still and very heavy and says:

“I did NOT sign up for this. I CANNOT keep doing this… I DO NOT recognize the life I am living anymore.”

What you’re doing at such a time is beginning to name something specific BEYOND just the obvious burnout and grief we all know you carry… You’re sharing this from a removed place of watching your own life happen to you from a slight distance while you simply “exist” going through the motions of living that you’re not even sure are your own to begin with…

And it’s IMPORTANT that you name that, Mom… I inistst that you HOLD ONTO it… Just please don’t rush past it straight into a billion solutions that won’t ever hold.

You Have THIS Diagnosis

You may NOT be living wrong, but there IS a name for the source of your dread. And that “misalignment” should be reframed to appear inspiring rather than deflating in your eyesight.

The thing is that “conventional life” has its own specific shape that we’re all familiar with because it has been seeded and nurtured within us long before we were ever capable of developing a life of our own design: It has an accordingly conventional relationship to schedules and routine, to rest and productivity, to what a “good week” looks like, and even to how much of yourself you’re allowed to want back… The strategies, rhythms, and self-management tools that most other Moms come to lean on and adhere to are built for THAT shape of life.

And to conflict with this is the fact that autism and special needs motherhood has a completely different shape…

OUR lives have a different relationship to time because our children’s significant needs refuse to operate on any schedule in existence. A different relationship to rest because our own nature of exhaustion can’t be relieved by any amount of sleep alone. A different relationship to planning because even our best-laid plans collapse in ways that conventional paper and digital planners alike have NO column for (even though I still decided to buy myself yet another one just recently…). A different relationship to identity because (insert your kid’s particular diagnosis here) manages to completely reshape our child’s life AND our own at its arrival.

Whenever you try to inhabit your life using the conventional tools designed for others, the result is nearly always dread, the sense of failing at something that others seem to manage just fine, assuming that you’re simply ineficient, or that something else MUST be wrong with you and how you’re living your life.

But you are not doing it wrong. You ARE using the wrong map for this specific terrain:

I’ve said many times before using my platform here that you can ONLY navigate the life you’re actually living, NOT the one that you were “supposed to” have… And the dread you’re currently feeling is not some verdict… It’s actually a compass in this case: It is trying to teach you that something in the way you are currently inhabiting your life is misaligned with its unconventional nature and shape.

AND, your misalignment isn’t a condemnation. It IS an invitation to adjust… That’s inspiring and not deflating, because there is something you can do with that information…

And THIS is the central truth of everything Little Alchemies is about, and it bears repeating here because this dread is often partly fueled by the distance between the life we are really living and the one we believe we should be living by now.

Subscribe now

The Practice

Thankfully, there are many practical modifications possible that can help along the way of simplifying our reality, and I call this application “softening the edges” of your life…

I don’t call these practices “solutions” because their purpose ISN’T to make the hard things (like the unnecessary weight, your misaligned expectations, and the places where you are making this harder than the life itself requires) any easier… Because the simple truth is that every life has its own “necessary weight”. And the autism and special needs motherhood life carries with it more than most… “Softening the edges” is about removing everything that is NOT part of the “necessary weight” (like the extra obligations, impossible standards, those things you do because conventional life Moms do them and you haven’t even questioned whether they fit for you).

Drawing from my days as an Online Business Manager, here are three methods to get this type of simplification accomplished:

1. Do Less, and Mean It

NOT just as a temporary accommodation for a hard season, but as a permanent philosophical stance. The life you are living cannot hold what a conventional life can hold. Not because you are less capable, but because it is a more demanding life. Something that is carrying a hundred pounds with struggle cannot also carry another fifty regardless of how willing it is.

What can be released? What is on your list that was never really yours to begin with? What expectations (from yourself, others, AND the culture) are you carrying that this specific life never actually required of you?

PRACTICAL MODIFICATIONS:

• Audit your schedule for obligations that produce more obligation than meaning. (Read that again.)

• Identify social commitments that cost more than they restore.

• Release the domestic standards that nobody in your house actually needs. (This is a loud one for me!)

• Say No to things that fit conventionally-shaped lives but not yours.

• Please just let the dishes sit in the sink when the alternative is your nervous system.

2. Get and Receive Help Without Guilt

Like MOST moms, the autism and special needs mom has also often internalized that asking for help is evidence that she can’t manage what others somehow manage just fine. This story is both false and expensive.

You were never meant to do this alone. No one was. And this specific life with its higher demands and more limited capacity for outside support needs MORE help than a conventional life, not less.

PRACTICAL MODIFICATIONS:

• Identify ONE thing that could be delegated, hired out, or asked for this week.

• Practice receiving help without immediately reciprocating or minimizing.

• Join or build community specifically with women who understand this life from the inside. (Visit my community, The Lounge; it’s FREE to sign-up, so come play!)

• Allow your child’s other parent, a family member, or a support person to do something imperfectly rather than re-do it yourself.

• Name one human being who could hold something you have been carrying alone.

3. Automate and Tool What You Can

Every minute spent on administrative friction is a minute not available for your actual life itself. The scheduling. The reminders. The logistics. The things that have to happen but DO NOT require your presence, creativity, or emotional engagement.

This is not laziness. This is the intelligent reallocation of limited resources toward what DOES actually require you.

PRACTICAL MODIFICATIONS:

• Identify three recurring tasks that could be automated or simplified somehow.

• Use grocery delivery, meal kits, or simplified meal frameworks to eliminate decision fatigue.

• Set up automatic bill pay, subscription management, and recurring order for household staples.

• Use calendar automation for appointment reminders, medication schedules, therapy tracking. (I personally use and even recently gifted a lifetime license to one of my community members the life organizer LiveIt [formerly Journal it!])

• Let go of the manual management of anything that technology can hold.

The Mental Dedication

YOU HAVE TO DECIDE TO INHABIT THIS LIFE.

Everything above (the softening, the help, the automation) requires ONE thing underneath it to work: a decision from you.

Inhabiting this life differently is NOT something that can successfully happen in a passive way… It is not something that arrives when the circumstances finally cooperate (they never will). It is a practice. And like all practices, it begins with a deliberate, repeated, ongoing choice to show up for it.

And that choice sounds like this:

“I AM going to inhabit this specific life, in this specific way, with this specific set of tools. NOT because it is the life I would have chosen for myself, but because it is the ONLY life available for inhabiting. I choose to live inside it rather than waiting at its edge.”

And that dedication is not a one-time decision, either. It is one made again on the hard Tuesdays. Again after the appointment that did not go the way it was supposed to. Again when the dread returns (as it WILL, because dread in this life is not a problem to be solved once, but a recurring visitor to be met with a recurring response).

The response is not “How do I escape this?” It is “What does this particular version of the dread need today?” And then the smallest possible softening and return to the dedication…

THAT is the practice. Not a transformation or an arrival: an active practice.

An Invitation:

You are not failing at your life. You ARE living a life that is genuinely different from the ones that most of the strategies, expectations, and self-help frameworks were designed for. And you have been trying to inhabit it using the instructions written for a completely different shape of existence…

Your dread is not a verdict. It is a message. It is telling you that the fit is wrong, not that YOU are wrong.

This life CAN be inhabited. Not perfectly and without the hard days, heavy seasons, and recurring grief of what was imagined versus what is… But genuinely and honestly, with pockets of realness and aliveness and belonging that belong entirely to YOU.

Soften the edges. Get the help. Make the decision again.

You have to inhabit a life this different in an accordingly different way. And you are allowed to do just that.

THAT is the whole invitation…

With MUCH warmth,

Cheniece Patrick ♡

Current Resources

Little Alchemies is more than just another lifestyle blog or newsletter about parenting special needs and neurodivergent children; it’s a mom’s real life personal journal and a sanctuary for other mothers and women inhabiting their lives again after Survival Mode. Through honest essays, gentle prompts, and an intentional community, you’ll rediscover your creativity, identity, and inner calm.

TRANSMUTE the weight of living into GOLD…

Subscribe now

YOUR SPONSORED MESSAGE

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
My audience is devoted, intentional, and always hungry for resources that actually matter. I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.

🫱🏻‍🫲🏼 Ad Packages

Subscribe ➕

Hi Friend of mine ♡

Let’s believe in the best about today. There is good IN you, and there is good here FOR you as well. And I’m convinced that your faith in this makes all the difference…

Taking breaks is human… but our society can’t help but to frown at the mother who permits herself to rest, especially for an extended time. And yes, I’m rolling my eyes as I consider my own unplanned hiatus here at the lifestyle publication that is my newsletter, Little Alchemies.

Here’s the thing about me: I am mostly incapable of pretending that the pause in my duties here did not happen by writing around it with a breezy “I’m back!” (as if we both don’t know that I was gone) and moving forward without acknowledging that gap between us. That kind of performance has never been what this space is about. And it would feel dishonest to do it now, in a newsletter that has always insisted on the honest version of things…

So. Here is the “Honest Version” of my break:

I stopped. It was unplanned and lasted far longer than I ever intended. I stopped in the way that things sometimes stop when the body, mind, and well of creative source have simply been exhausted (in more than one sense) and begin refusing to produce anything further, regardless of what the content calendar says. The words just wouldn’t come, in other words…

Since it was an unplanned event, I did not announce my hiatus. It arrived as a sudden collapse of my capacity that had been running on fumes for longer than I had admitted to myself. And then came the feelings of guilt following closely behind. Which, if you have ever tried to rest while simultaneously prosecuting yourself for resting, you know it is approximately as restorative as not resting at all.

And I sat with my guilt, which belongs to most of us, because sitting with uncomfortable primary feelings until they give up their real secondary meanings is the sort of thing that I do. The guilt that had pretended to extend from my having a rest and my untended responsibilities and commitments was actually covering for the voice underneath that has always told me that my worth is located in my productivity. That my right to take up space is contingent on my output… It says that if I stop, even briefly for excellent reasons, I will be found out as someone who was never worthy of the room that everyone else assumes.

Well, that voice is simply a liar. It has always been a liar, even if a convincing one. It is particularly effective on us mothers, especially the autism and special needs moms who already spend so much of our daily lives feeling like we are not doing enough for our child(ren) who needs everything.

I am choosing, this time, to put that voice down and pick up something truer instead:

Rest is not the opposite of devotion, even if our culture is quick to judge mothers who choose to do so. Especially us mothers of children with significant needs, where the needs are real and every pause carries the implication that someone is not getting what they require… The assumption is that a good mother is one who never stops.

But I have lived in that assumption and know where it leads: to the type of rest that isn’t chosen and the stop that is forced on us rather than permitted... In my case, it resulted in creativity that went completely silent, not because it had nothing to say, but because the vessel it lives in had been emptied past the point of production.

I do not want to build my life or this publication on that model. And I do not want that for you either.

So here, formally, I’d like to insist again that rest is a very human thing that even mothers are permitted to engage in. It requires no excuses at your return, and no confessions are due. You are free to choose rest when your content calendar doesn’t allow it and when your invisible jury hangs on ready to frown at you…

Roll your eyes at the jury (and at your own self if you must) and rest anyway…

I am glad to be back. Genuinely, in the non-performative way.

I missed this. I missed you: the still-becoming women who read these letters and occasionally reply to tell me that something I wrote finally translates what you have been living through. Finding out, in the quiet of my pause, that I genuinely missed this is the thing that now brings me back, not out of obligation, but out of actual desire.

It feels like enough of a reason to me.

See you in the next letter.

— Cheniece ♡

Subscribe now

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.
🤝Sponsorship Info

Subscribe ➕

✨ If this post is too long for your email client and gets clipped, click the link at the top to view the browser version of the full post…

Even before I experienced many years of dark and sticky mental health struggles, faced clinically suppressed fertility head-on while actively trying to conceive, eventually went on to become the parent of two disabled (special needs and autistic) children, and suffered a nearly complete loss of my sense of identity, there have been seasons during which I would wake up and soon after begin to sense a low and steady dread about the day ahead of me. And this still occasionally happens today.

There isn’t an accompanying panic. A crisis is also no companion to this form of dread… There isn’t even a dramatic desire to just make myself disappear… Just a quietly persistent heaviness weighing me down with its massive load.

There are the dishes, the emails, the requests, the small negotiations, the noise, and the invisible checklist of To-Do items always running many steps ahead of me before I can even leave the bedroom.

And the strangest part about this whole ordeal is that I generally DO love my life.

That goes to say that I feel a deep contentment. I adore my family. I’m grateful for what all we’ve managed to build together as a unit. I intentionally chose this lifestyle rhythm, after all. I wanted this.

So then why does it still sometimes feel as if I’m bracing myself for it?..

If you have ever felt anything similar, like feeling as though you’re dreading a life you consciously chose for yourself, know something immediately:

None of that means that you made the wrong life choices along the way.

It doesn’t mean that you’re an ungrateful person. Or that you must secretly want to burn it all down to cinders. Because sometimes, the dread you feel isn’t actually an accurate reflection of your life. It’s indicates much, much more about the way that you’re living inside of that life…

And before we can rush on to approach just how to “fix” anything about this fact, let’s slow down long enough together to understand what this feeling might actually be trying to communicate to us.

What Dread Actually Signals

As you can imagine, dread is rarely an isolated random occurance. This all-too-human sensation is actually valuable information to us. Often it is a nervous system whisper before it can emerge as our literal scream.

Whenever I’ve traced my own bouts of dread back to their source, I’ve discovered that it has hardly ever been truly about desiring a different family, another partner, or even a completely different life path. It has usually been one of the following:

• Constant overstimulation

• A lack of solitude

• Carrying around too much invisible labor

• Suppressed resentment

• No margin built into my day

• Becoming only one role

Dread can build up slowly inside of us when there’s insufficient room for us to land inside of our own lives… When every day you live already feels spoken for, when you can’t even hear yourself think, and when you haven’t had a single private thought that wasn’t interrupted.

It is very possible for one to be both deeply committed to his or her own life and still somehow feel inside of themselves as though they are disappearing inside of it.

And that quiet, gradual, and barely even noticeable at first disappearance of a person is actually what your feelings of dread are reacting to.

You’re not necessarily longing for a whole new life. You may only be longing for more space within the one you have already.

Five Gentle Things to Do When You Feel Dread

Not dramatic interventions or entire life overhauls. Just small, sustainable shifts that create more breathing room.

1. Shrink the Day

When the full weight of your life feels like too much to carry all at once, the most quiet, yet radical, thing you can do at that time is to resist your urge to solve all of it, and then ask yourself: “What would make today even 10% softer than yesterday?”

Maybe that looks like canceling the optional commitment you said “Yes” to out of a feeling of obligation. Maybe preparing dinner becomes something much simpler than what you had originally planned (and you then release yourself from the pressure of having planned it that way). Maybe you allow your home look lived-in for the day (or two weeks) because it IS, and you decide that this is enough for right now.

Dread has a way of expanding to fill all available space with its pressure... And when we soften just one edge of one single day, we interrupt that cycle, even just briefly. You are not being asked to redesign your whole life this week. You are being invited to locate just one small pocket of relief and to climb inside of it, even if only for a moment.

2. Create One Private Ritual

(I love this one.) Something that belongs entirely and only to you. Take ten quiet minutes alone with your coffee or tea before anyone else in the house wakes up. Go on a brief walk around without your mobile device waiting to buzz inside of your pocket. Allow yourself to experience a few extra minutes sitting alone in your parked car before going inside your house. Write down three exquisitely unfiltered sentences into a notebook that no one else will ever read…

This ritual doesn’t need to be “impressive”. It doesn’t even need to make sense to anyone outside of you.

Our private rituals do something that nothing else quite can: They restore our felt sense of identity. They are small, but consistent, reminders that you and I are full and separate people, and not merely a fixture that the people around us rely on daily. When every single part of your day is shared or managed or monitored in some way, even the smallest privacy can begin to feel genuinely radical... You don’t require hours carved out of your schedule to begin feeling this way. You only need the consistency of returning to something that is yours.

3. Audit the Invisible Load

SO much of our dread quietly accumulates in the things left unspoken in our lives... In all of the things we hold inside (that no one ever officially assigned to us), and that we have never even said out loud or been acknowledged for carrying.

Try making a list, not of what all you have managed to accomplish in the day, but of everything you are currently holding inside your mind… The medical and therapy appointments, those emotional temperature checks you quietly run on everyone within the househould except for yourself, the constant future planning, the birthdays you remember so no one else has to, the way you’re troubleshooting problems that haven’t even occured yet…

Write ALL of it down. And then, with as much honesty and compassion as you can come up with, ask yourself the following questions I learned to survey myself with as a solo online business owner: What on this list can be delegated to someone else? What can actually be delayed without any real consequence? And what, if you gave yourself the permission to, can simply be dropped altogether?..

You may not be able to offload everything. But the act of just naming it out loud, even just to yourself or onto paper, is a form of validation itself. Sometimes dread is nothing more than our body’s response to carrying around a huge invisible weight for too long without a moment of acknowledgment.

4. Add One Drop of Aliveness

Not one more item from a productivity list. Not an entire personal-development project, either. But actual… ..aliveness. That’s the only word that fits what I mean here.

Read one page of the book that has been sitting on your nightstand long enough to collect dust by now. Play the song that somehow still makes you feel like yourself (that version of yourself that exists underneath all of the roles you inhabit, at least). Reach out to a real friend whose presence feels like oxygen to you rather than pressure. Step outside for a few minutes and let the sun touch your body without also forming tomorrow’s To-Do list in the back of your mind.

We sometimes have the tendency, those of us who are tired in our bones and very heavy, to consider productivity as a cure. But dread is hardly ever resolved through this sort of optimization. It IS gently eased through the introduction of incremental degrees of vitality. And the beautiful thing about this vitality is that it does not require bold moves on our part. Small doses, when offered consistently, can genuinely count.

5. Let Yourself Tell the Truth (On Paper)

There is something quietly powerful about finally writing down the things you have not been able to say out loud to anyone else…

So, sit with yourself and try asking:

“What am I tired of pretending doesn’t bother me?.. Where do I consistently feel unseen, even by the people who love me? What would real relief look like for me during this week? And what parts of me haven’t had real space to exist lately?..”

You are NOT looking for polished or even coherent answers here. You are only looking for honesty… the quiet, unguarded kind.

… And gratitude… IS a genuinely beautiful practice...

…I believe in it fully. But gratitude that is forced to sit on top of our active feelings of resentment towards our life doesn’t actually function as true gratitude... Over time, this becomes our suppression. And suppression is unsurprisingly one of the primary ways that dread finds its way back into our mornings to begin with... When we give Truth even just a small amount of room to breathe, dread begins to slowly and mercifully soften.

What Not to Do:

When you are tired and depleted from carrying much more than you should, there is a very human temptation in us to make the heaviness mean something enormous and permanent about ourselves and our lives: “I chose wrong. I have wasted years of my life. I need to burn everything down and start over from the beginning.”

I gently ask that you pause right there.

Exhaustion is not an accurate narrator. It distorts our perspectives in significant ways by narrowing our frame of vision until everything we are looking at appears fixed and immoveable when often, it isn’t.

But don’t ever shame yourself into performing gratitude over your feelings that are asking for something different from you... Don’t attempt to optimize your way out of what is actually a nervous system signal asking for rest. And please don’t make any general and permanent decisions about your life from inside the very middle of a season of depletion.

Dread is not a moral failure of ours. It is not proof that you are an ungrateful or weak person, or that you have gotten your life all wrong along the way... It IS feedback. It IS your body and your nervous system asking in the ways that they know how to, for some form of reset.

A Different Reframe

What if the Thing you are currently dreading isn’t actually your life?..

What if it’s the pace of it instead? The noise inside of it. The lack of any margin within it. The way that you have become so constantly and completely accessible to everyone and everything around you that YOU have lost access to yourself in the process?..

What if the life you’ve built doesn’t need any reinvention… but only to be inhabited differently?

Intentional living is about becoming more present inside the life that exists for us already... And our real, embodied presence requires space... It needs space for you to feel what you actually feel, to think a thought from beginning to end without interruption, and to want something for yourself without the immediate reflex to label that desire as selfish or undeserved.

You can love your life and still need it to change in some way. You can be deeply grateful and also overwhelmed, and have both of those things be completely true at the same time. You can be fully committed to the life you chose and still be exhausted by the weight of living it. Ask me how I might know…These are not contradictions. They are among the most honest signs that you are a human being paying attention…

So, just soften ONE edge today.

That is genuinely enough.

With love and a little more breathing room,

If you actually wrote down everything that you’re currently holding inside mentally (not what you DID, but what you’re carrying) what do you think would surprise you most about that list?..

What would it look like, practically, to soften just ONE edge of your week?..

If you’re a mother or caregiver raising a neurodivergent child and feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or unseen, UnCommon Momma was created specifically for you. This private membership community focuses on supporting your healing, growth, and wellbeing in a world that often overlooks your needs.

What you’ll find inside:

• Peer support from others who truly understand your experience

• Guided self-care practices and wellness resources

• Access to a private podcast and live community gatherings

• A safe space where your identity and needs matter

There’s a Forever Free tier to dip your toe into at absolutely no risk because everyone deserves to belong. Click here to join us ↓

Join Our Community

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.
🤝Sponsorship Info

(✨ If this post is too long to read from your email client, simply click on the name of the title above to view the full version Web-style in your browser )

Landing Place

I’m going to deep dive into a complete “Starter Kit” for a successful adoption of the Slow Living way of life for you.

In fact, it’s going to include a practical list every single thing you will NEED in order to achieve the Slow Living lifestyle, and beautifully so. You’ll manage to retain a maximum level of comfort, while still gaining all of the associated elements of “cozy” that will do your spirit some healing good during this whole experiment. You’ll emerge blissfully revitalized by your trial, and you’ll ALSO experience the bonus good feelings of achieving a quick and easy “Win” too.

Now, know this first: the core idea behind the Slow Living movement has by now been re-tanslated and modified many times over by a thousand different aesthetic Pinterest boards and influencer reels... This overcomplication of something originally quite simple has muddied the true essence of what Slow Living really is all about, and so much original clarity can be lost. It’s nothing short of disappointing to witness those who would be newly assuming this enriching lifestyle quickly dedicate their focus to superficial subjects such as purchasing expensive trending candles, planning their perfect morning routine down to the half-minute, and even abandoning their lives to the most extreme degrees in a sudden all-or-nothing shift…

But none of that is where true Slow Living really begins.

It instead begins with implementing much smaller and more intentional supports in one’s life… The conception appears as things that work to make life increasingly inhabitable, instead of those that equal its escape. This is a deeply thoughtful undergoing, and the entire process when carried out in an informed way can feel mostly easeful and authentic, which are two key qualities of this movement.

And from here, you will be among those informed ones... Because the Starter Kit I wish someone had handed me up front (a while ago now) is currently being itemized for you, right here in this reading.

The following supply list is for your easy reference and successful start:

The “Slow Living” Starter Kit

1. One Dedicated “Landing Spot”

This can be a comfortable chair in a favorite room of your home, a dedicated corner of the couch, the office chair at your desk, or even just the edge of your bed… For me, my main Landing Spot is seated at my workstation, as I am currently, surrounded by all of my writing tools and collection of office accessories I like to work with.

Why This is Important:

Slow Living demands containment and its associations… You will benefit immeasurably from establishing this place in your life, somewhere that your nervous system can recognize as the one place if nowhere else to where you can always return and fully exhale right before any work of restoration begins.

And note that this spot doesn’t need to be styled or professionally staged. It must only be yours.

2. A Low-Pressure Writing Tool

Read that again, and please avoid any urges to equate this to some influencer’s productivity system product or a rigid content calendar outlining the next quarter… All that is truly required is a simple notebook you enjoy or a digital Journal that you know you’ll realistically use.

Why This is Important:

Writing is a simple way that most of us can easily use to metaphorically "metabolize” the contents of our daily lives. Otherwise, we venture onwards carrying around this growing collection of byproduct waste resulting from its lack of chances to be processed.

I personally rotate between writing here in my inbox publication, the Journal (Blog) located at my personal website, and even the physical pages of my Weekly Planner… The tool itself matters much less than does the permission to write badly using it… You’ll need the freedom to be candid and genuine here, so pick an appropriate tool.

3. A Gentle Time Boundary

There exists a common misconception that Slow Living is synonymous to one having no form of daily structure in his or her life, and this is simply not true. Slow Living just means that the structure that is softly and thoughtfully laid out in our lives is kind to us in return.

Examples of this in practice could look like:

• One 15-minute window for yourself

• A “No Input” hour

• A boundary around not checking your metrics daily

Why This is Important:

As most of us can probably agree on, an absence of structure is detrimental to us. And in Slow Living this opinion still holds up watertight without any leaks. Without some form of boundary with its threads running through our lives to even a loose degree, everything else inside becomes overtaken by noise, even rest itself.

4. One Grounding Ritual You Can Actually Keep

Very much like I attempted to express in a recent post here, the most important quality of any great Grounding Ritual is the ease in which you are able to adopt it to regular use… Fancy 10-step routines that you struggle to “get right” each time you put one into practice are all useless to you without this practicality.

In my previous post (on the feeling of Resentment, and forcing ourselves to feel something else positive and false), I taught us a perfectly suitable Grounding Ritual complete with an included free, downloadable .PDF resource. And if you are currently using this method, you do well to resume… Anything similar that you will realistically put into practice will work just as well…

Think:

• Firmly placing both feet on the floor and taking three deep breaths in

• Lighting a favorite candle before you write your daily reflection in your dedicated journal

• Stepping outside your home to experience just 60 seconds of the fresh air outside

Why This is Important:

Ritual is underpinned by habbit, which is the reinforced teaching resulting from the act of repetition. Whenever we manage to keep our Grounding Rituals as a regular practice, we are actually teaching ourselves, and especially our nervous systems, that this present moment matters… This moment matters to us simply because of our targeted intention, and this is true even if nothing on the outside of this one moment actually changed at all.

Grounding Guide 1

2.22MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Resource from previous post, "Stop Trying to Love the Life That's Breaking You" which teaches a Grounding Ritual

Download

📥 Get Previous Resource

5. A Way to Capture Small Wins

The evidence of Slow Living does not usually manifest itself in the big, bold breakthroughs that happen in our lives… It is much more likely to arrive during very subtle shifts appearing like:

“I paused…”

“I noticed...”

or

“I didn’t abandon myself…”

Why This is Important:

Stated simply, your mind will appreciate all efforts made to establish proof that this way of life is actually unfolding successfully for you. Follow through with keeping a simple, updated digital or pen and paper list of “glimmers” you experience in your life… It doesn’t need to be elaborate, fancy, or long-form, either. Only the date and its associated Truth are required for this documentation.

6. Fewer Inputs, Chosen on Purpose

Again, I feel it necessary to insist that Slow Living is not based in the actions of “giving up” our entire lives to extreme degrees, voluntarily abandoning our current circumstances, or shutting out everything we consider to be not in our newly-established best interest… In fact, the genuine adoption of this lifestyle can be better conceptualized as selectivity of what all we allow to enter inside of our experiences.

It helps, when you find yourself in the act of deciding what all to permit into your life, to ask yourself several questions to serve as a barometer to the innermost truth placed within you. Pause long enough to gague your visceral, gut answer to questions of the following nature:

“Who of the people closest to me leaves me feeling the most steady about myself?..”

and

“What type of content to which I’m often exposed gives me the sensation of being most present in my body?..”

Note your authentic responses and keep this guidance in your consideration for interactions going forward

Why This is Important:

The following is deceptively simple to comprehend and often eludes our sound judgement: Your inner life reflects what you feed it.

7. One Place That Doesn’t Demand Performance

We’ve now come a full circle and finally find ourselves quite near where we began this whole list: in our preferred place, or environment. In this sense of the meaning of “place” realize that this one need not be an actual physical, discoverable location with lattitude and longitudinal coordinates…

In reality, this sort of place could resemble an infinite number of potential fittings for you… You might instantly feel “at home” with a beautiful new fountain pen and your personal Journal, already open to a fresh, blank page. Or, this could default to something online for others… An email newsletter subscriber circle is suitable, as is a private, premium online community of your peers where you are never faced with the need to explain yourself for clarity.

For myself, I return to this special inbox publication/email newsletter of mine and the lovely online community of my subscribers included with it.

Why This is Important:

It is no secret that effective healing of nearly all types can more easily occur in the secure, private places in our lives than it can on a busy stage supporting the fullness of entertainment’s activity... And meaning, with a depth to it, ALSO flocks to these same places where healing intervention causes us to thrive… You’ll see these two co-occurring for us at different times along our journey. But know that to secure your desired measure of them both, you’ll most likely need to occupy certain sacred rooms and firmly shut closed the doors with only yourself and the quiet residing within…

Leave a comment

Resources & References

✨ Bonus: Free Grounding Ritual Download

To make this gentle change easier for you, I’ve created a convenient and gorgeous free Grounding Ritual PDF you can use anytime you find yourself feeling scattered, currently resentful of your life, or disconnected from yourself…

Inside, you’ll find:

• A simple step-by-step grounding ritual

• Gentle journaling prompts for self-return

• A printable + digital-friendly format

You can download it here → Free Grounding Ritual PDF

Grounding Guide #2

2.27MB ∙ PDF file

Download

The 2nd installment of the Grounding Guide. Includes "A Grounding Ritual: - a gentle practice for returning to yourself"

Download

The Sign-off

So now we can all confirm and agree that Slow Living is not about doing less of life.

Rather, it’s about deeply abiding in and inhabiting the one you have…

And you truly don’t require very much at all to begin shifting your ways toward the full assumption of this rewarding approach to living...

You only need one (cozy) place to land… and the full permission to remain there.

Resources & Tools

Looking for a community, too?..

If you’re a mother or caregiver raising a neurodivergent child or child with needs and are feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or unseen, The Refinery Lounge was created specifically for you. This private opt-in community focuses on supporting your healing, growth, and wellbeing in a world that often overlooks your needs.

What you’ll find inside:

• Peer support from others who truly understand your experience

• Guided self-care practices and wellness resources

• Access to community gatherings

• A safe space where your identity and needs matter

It’s completely FREE to join us, so you can dip your toe in at absolutely no risk because everyone deserves to belong. Click here to join us ↓

👥 Join The Lounge! 👥

Subscribe ➕

I’ll admit that I’ve spent an embarassingly too-long time chasing a presence that was never meant to suit me as an individual, especially as a mother… I tried, inconsistently while riding along the waves of my nervous system, to force a fit that wasn’t sustainable or comfortable. I’ve chased big, fast platforms, fleeting algorithymic alignment, expensive tech, and the exhaustion of always staying “on” and everywhere.

I truly don’t want to live there anymore.

I am firmly turning away from a world full of loud timelines and the constant need for validation that my expression is worthy of vanity metrics. I’m passing up the path of branding and optimizing every aspect of myself to a maximum output tracked on a Notion dashboard. I’m letting go of seeking popular relevance and proof that I am doing something worth noticing.

Instead, I’m rebranding my publication and building Little Alchemies right here.

According to my new About page, this emerging project is my personal outlet and sacred landing space for slow living and writing... For ideas and reflection that don’t need a takeaway. For the kind of real inner life that can’t thrive in constant motion.

My goal was to establish my corner of the Internet to feel like a curated living room with closed doors you open by intentional choice instead of a performance on a busy stage. And I want this room this room to have weight to it. I wanted it to be somewhere that you enjoy visiting because there’s no need to Follow or Like yourself into approval. And I wanted here to be somewhere that doesn’t demand that I perform my healing or package my humanity for an audience.

Here, you can now expect:

• Personal essays about caregiving, identity, and staying human

• Gentle rituals and grounding practices you can actually use

• Writing that values presence over productivity

• A slower rhythm — letters sent when they’re ready, not when they’re demanded

The belief behind my publication and it’s name is that your life can be, and should be, inhabitable itself. I believe and KNOW that all of our inner lives deserve a measure of care, attention, and meaning.

This is becoming more and more important today.

There is currently an active mass return to what is authentic and personable… People are seeking to answer to their need for tangible rituals again. Quiet routines. We’re all flocking to spaces that can hold without developing leaks: spaces that fulfill instead of drain from us.

The solution I offer in answer to this is Little Alchemies.

If this sounds like your kind of space, subscribe and join me.

The door is open. You’re welcome to come in, sit down, and stay awhile.

Subscribe now

Little Alchemies is more than an email newsletter about parenting special needs and neurodivergent children; it’s a mom’s real life personal journal and a sanctuary for other mothers and women inhabiting their lives again after Survival Mode. Through honest essays, gentle prompts, and an intentional community, you’ll rediscover your creativity, identity, and inner calm.

Share

If you’re a mother or caregiver raising a neurodivergent child and feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or unseen, UnCommon Momma was created specifically for you. This private membership community focuses on supporting your healing, growth, and wellbeing in a world that often overlooks your needs.

What you’ll find inside:

• Peer support from others who truly understand your experience

• Guided self-care practices and wellness resources

• Access to a private podcast and live community gatherings

• A safe space where your identity and needs matter

There’s a Forever Free tier to dip your toe into at absolutely no risk because everyone deserves to belong. Click here to join us ↓

Join Our Community

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.
🤝Sponsorship Info 

Subscribe ➕

Here on the eve of the New Year, I’m seated at my workstation with quiet dedication, scanning my whole body over for any and all bleak little pulses of serotonin that might be still left over from the day, the week previous... It’s honestly not looking so good I think as I absent-mindedly hand my daughter her millionth-and-first pasteurized fruit punch inside of a box within this same hour.

The cats are being spooked by an abundance of fireworks popping and crackling too closely outside of our window, and I pause briefly to consider the collection of my own traumas that I would like to leave behind and not carry into this upcoming year.

When there are so many things, such as I have, that threaten to take over any semblance of stability or tranquility that your day may assume, there must be a very intentional effort made towards instilling the life-giving and healing effects that we all desire to feel into our experience. It is not a false appearance. This is the very real result of our own efforts directed towards augmenting what benefits us, instead of passively “going with the flow” or drowning underneath the killing currents.

I consider it a shame that more people do not take the opportunity to indulge in the act of visualization… It’s as pleasant as daydreaming and it’s fueled by the infinite charms that our delights might manifest themselves as. And it certainly feels a lot better than ruminating on our suffering and misery, even if not based in reality.

Establishing your life as the artist’s canvas on which you either consciously or unconsciously direct your focus, your intentions, and your efforts is perhaps some of the most important work that we can do for ourselves while taking control of how we perceive and experience our lives… Nothing can substantially change for us until this is firmly set as a foundation.

And once you have felt the very first tendrils of magick, freedom, and possibility infuse your human ecosystem, you’ll never fully lose the ability to activate this again within yourself. Once you’ve danced with your Universe in an aware state of receiving and giving in the flow of pursuing your desires, you’ll notice a clarity that abounds to keep you “in tune” to the symphony playing in your ears, to the steps of your own authentic life.

This is truly your one “job” to do. And it is alchemy.

The magic of alchemy lies in its power of transmutation. This means that there will be nights full of fireworks to spook our cats in the future, and that we will again fight to find any signs of serotonin that might exist inside. But, we as Masters of our authentic lives have the ability to show up with presence rather than with denial or resignation.

This work does not ask you to deny your grief, your fatigue, your anger, or the very real constraints of your life. It asks you to refuse to let them become the only authors of your inner world. It asks you to remember that even here, especially here, you retain authorship over where you place your attention, what you nourish, and what you allow to take root.

You become a magician when you choose to assume softness instead of hardening with the day’s blows and when you opt to find meaning amidst a life of clinical routines. You take up your magic staff or wand the same moment that your honestly decide that your current life, just as it is currently, is still worthy of all of life’s beauty, joy, and care.

I hope that you also choose this path of quiet rebellion and continue to travel with me.

As I close my laptop at the start of this New Year, I now carry with me the intentions of continuing this work, this ritual, of keeping myself well.

The cats and I wish you a year filled with all of the best magick that you can tolerate.

Happy New Year,

Join Our Community

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.
🤝Sponsorship Info

Subscribe ➕

✨(If this post is too long for your email client, click the title above to navigate to the Web version…)

Have you ever just NOT… ..wanted... the life you currently have?..

…I don’t mean to ask if you have ever desired the alternative to being ALIVE, only if you have ever been SO displeased with your particular life circumstances and reality that you have pined for a total revision of the facts in order to achieve the fullness of your joy.

There have been many days in my life during which right after waking, the complete oppressive weight of my life would come in to settle on top of me before I could even fully open both of my eyes. It’s form had edges that were nearly always painfully sharp and it often arrived in new and unexpected shapes.

I would then briefly consider the fact that the dishes were piling up in the kitchen sink, or that I had to attend and meet the obligations for several of my children’s therapy appointments that week, and I would feel the sensations of dread and resistance quickly shift in.

There was not rage there, and sometimes not even dramatic despair... But there WAS a whisper I heard threateningly increase in volume to a full scream of “Why ME?!. I did NOT sign up for all of this!..”

If you too have ever had to quickly swallow and stuff this same voice down your throat, then you are definitely NOT alone... And you’re also not even a bad or failed woman for it.

The Truth About Resentment…

We’re conditioned as a society to believe that truly grateful people DON’T resent their own lives, and that all good mothers are inherently able to accept the humbling realities of this life with grace (and a smile behind lipstick), and that those who are securely fitted within their spirituality can sublimate their pain into gratitude for the very painful growth(?).

I do not have to inform you that this is NOT actually the truth, nor is that how things actually work.

I’m here to confirm for you that you can both fiercely and intensely love your two disabled children and STILL feel very suffocated by the particular shape that your personal version of motherhood has taken on...

Just as you can honor your OWN neurodivergent brain and still grieve the version of yourself who moved through this world with just a little more ease than you currently do.

And you can be committed to this path and STILL fantasize about a parallel life where things are just... lighter.

Your feelings of resentment are NOT the moral failing that you currently frame them to be. And you deserve the grace and space to feel those emotions just as much as you deserve for this burden that you are shouldering, probably all alone, to vanish so that you can finally stop ignoring yourself and what you’ve been NEEDING for far too long…

SO, what exactly to do when that unfortunately shameful feeling of resentment rises up again within us?..

I have experienced more than my fair share of moments desperately spent belly-breathing and conducting frantic searches inside for a version of myself that still felt like the Me who should have emerged at the time (even from beneath the many lifestyle modifications and never-ending advocacy)…

BUT feelings of resentment cannot successfully be thought through… We as honest individuals can only feel ourselves through them towards a resolution and our healing.

And THAT requires coming back into the body and returning to the present moment, even when (especially when) the present moment is the very thing we are trying to escape…

So, try a simple Grounding Ritual for those times... Something simple enough as to do inside the bathroom within a few moments with the door locked. And something grounding enough as to disrupt the spiral before it threatens to take you under completely.

I’m sharing a suitable one with you today:

🌿 A Simple Grounding Ritual

FOR WHEN YOU DON’T WANT THE LIFE YOU HAVE

This ritual is NOT about fixing your life or generating false positivity…

It’s about helping your nervous system pause long enough to feel the ground beneath you again so that you can meet your current reality from a place of presence rather than panic.

Total time: 5 minutes

Step 1: Plant Your Feet (30 seconds)

Find a place where you can be alone, even briefly.

Sit or stand with both feet flat on the ground.

Feel the surface beneath you—the floor, the earth, whatever is holding your weight.

Relax your jaw. Drop your shoulders. Let your belly soften.

Say (out loud or internally):

“I am here. I don’t have to LIKE it to be PRESENT.”

Step 2: The Slow Return Breath (90 seconds)

This breath pattern signals safety to your nervous system and shifts you out of fight-or-flight.

• Inhale slowly through your nose for 4 counts

• Hold gently for 2 counts

• Exhale fully through your mouth for 6 counts

Repeat four times.

Please do not rush it. Let each breath be an act of self-return.

Step 3: Name What’s Real (60 seconds)

Without judgment or storytelling, quietly name three things that are true right now:

Not what you wish were true. Not what should be true. Just what is.

Examples:

“I am exhausted.”
“My body feels tense.”
“I’m overwhelmed and still trying.”
“Today is harder than I expected.”
“I don’t know how to fix this.”

Truth creates space. Judgment closes it.

Step 4: Offer Yourself Permission (30 seconds)

Place one hand over your heart or belly.

Feel the warmth of your own touch.

Say:

“It’s okay to feel what I feel. Nothing about this makes me unworthy of love.”

Let your body hear that. Let it sink in, even if you don’t fully believe it yet.

Step 5: Ask One Grounding Question (60 seconds)

Choose the question that speaks to you in this moment:

“What would make this moment feel 1% more bearable?”
“What do I actually need right now—physically, emotionally, spiritually?”
“Where in my body can I soften?”
“What can I set down, even temporarily?”

Do not overthink it. Let your intuition come forward to answer.

Sometimes the answer is “water.” Sometimes it’s “five more minutes alone.” And sometimes it’s “I need to cry.”

ALL OF YOUR ANSWERS ARE VALID.

Step 6 : The Re-Entry Breath (10 seconds)

One final breath.

Long, slow inhale through your nose.

Soft, open-mouth exhale—like you’re releasing everything you’ve been holding.

…Now, return to your day.

NOT fixed. NOT suddenly grateful. NOT pretending everything is fine...

Just more present. More yourself. More able to take the next small step.

📝 Integration Journaling Prompts

After this ritual, if you have the time and energy, sit with one or two of these questions:

1. Where in my life am I currently experiencing resistance or resentment?
2. What feels hardest about my specific reality right now? What makes it feel heavy?
3. What expectations of myself or my life feel unrealistic or inherited from others?
4. Which part of me is asking to be acknowledged, supported, or heard?
5. What does a “1% softer” version of this moment or season look like?
6. Where can I create micro-moments of support or relief for myself this week?
7. What truth did the ritual reveal that I haven’t allowed myself to admit?

🤐Anonymous Share Box

(ALL of these prompts plus the full ritual itself are in the companion PDF below that you can download and save for whenever you need it! 👇👇)

Grounding Guide #1

2.22MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Some issues of UnCommon Design include "The Grounding Guide" which is a companion resource filled with reflection prompts, gentle practices, and ways to find your way back to yourself. Think of it as a quiet moment you can return to. A pause between the noise. A way to reconnect with who you are beneath all the doing and giving. Download the very FIRST installment here!

Download

Please keep this Grounding Ritual close and use it whenever your current life feels like too much to tolerate, not what you wanted, or heavier than you think you can carry…

You can return to center every single time.

…NOT because it changes your circumstances, but because it changes your relationship to them.

And sometimes, that’s the only shift we actually have control over.

Download Resource

(Save it to your phone. Print it. Tape it to your mirror. Keep it wherever you need reminding that you’re allowed to feel everything and still be WHOLE…)

Thank you for being a cherished part of my life that I hold without ANY resentment,

Leave a comment

I suddenly felt very brave recently, and decided to host an un-planned, evergreen Ask Me Anything event in the subscriber Chat Lounge and on Substack Notes…

Got a Q for me?.. My friend Lisa offered me an excellent one herself, and I thank her deeply for the opportunity to express and process the thoughts contained in my response. If you’re a subscriber, feel free to also jump into the Chat below:

New members are trickling in to my passion project of a private peer-support community, and I couldn’t be happier about this than I already am… Big Thanks to ALL Free Forever AND Plus Members who engage, answer the surveys, send DMs, open and consume the resources, socialize, and simply choose to share space with me in this way… If YOU’RE an UnCommon Momma, and you haven’t joined this emerging space yet, you’re NOT late (and of course you are invited):

Join Our Community

Want to sponsor Little Alchemies?
I collaborate with partners aligned with: motherhood, mental health, wellness, self-care, self-growth, mindfulness, creativity, calm productivity, authentic living, and life design.
🤝Sponsorship Info

Hey there, beautiful Momma. It’s Cheniece. I want you to pause for a moment, take a deep breath in, and let it out slowly.

I see you right now. Maybe you’re hiding in the bathroom or sitting in your car in the Target parking lot. Or maybe you finally got a moment of quiet after everyone went to bed.

First, I want you to know something important: You’re doing so much better than you think you are. That meltdown this morning? The one that made you feel like you were failing? That wasn’t a reflection of your parenting. That was your child struggling to process a world that wasn’t built for them. And you showed up. Even when it was hard. Even when you were tired, you showed up.

Remember when you became a mom and you thought you knew EXACTLY what it would look like?..

None of us signed up for IEP meetings, or therapy appointments, or explaining to strangers why our child behaves the way they do. But here you are, doing it all. Learning a whole new language of advocacy and support. That’s not failure. That’s extraordinary strength.

I know you compare yourself to other moms sometimes. The one whose children stand quietly in line at the grocery store. The ones who seem to have it all together. But trust me on this: Every mom is fighting her own battles.

Yours are just more visible somedays.

Your worth isn’t measured by how your child behaves in public. Your success isn’t determined by how many meltdowns happen today. Your value doesn’t decrease when you’re exhausted and overwhelmed.

Here’s what I need you to remember:

You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to ask for help. You are allowed to have needs. You are allowed to say No. You are allowed to prioritize your well-being. You are allowed to find joy even on the hardest days...

The truth is, you can’t pour from an empty cup. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish. It’s necessary. Your children need you whole. Not perfect.

So right now, in this moment, I want you to put your hand on your heart. Feel it beating. That’s the rhythm of your strength, your resilience, your love.

Tomorrow won’t be perfect. There WILL be challenges. There will be moments that test your patience and break your heart. But there will also be tiny victories, unexpected giggles and moments of connection that remind you why this journey, this UnCommon path of motherhood, is so profoundly worth it…

You’ve got this, Momma.

NOT because you’ll do it flawlessly, but because you’ll keep showing up day after day with that big heart of yours... I’m right here with you. Stumbling. Learning. Growing... We’re in this together.

Now, straighten those shoulders. Lift that beautiful chin and go be the mother only YOU can be. You are seen. You are valued. You are enough.

5 Minute Reset Pep Talk

5.07KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Connect With UnCommon Design

• Join the Community: Become part of the UnCommon Design email community and The UnCommon Design Podcast for exclusive content and a private community of parents who understand.

• Leave a Review: Help other autism parents find this supportive space by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

The UnCommon Design Podcast celebrates the complex journey of raising neurodivergent children while reclaiming our identities beyond caregiving. Hosted by Cheniece Patrick, mother of two neurodivergent children and advocate for parental well-being.

Subscribe now

Subscribe ➕

In this both beautiful and humbling experience of a life that I lead, I’ve managed to learn just how to let go of certain things and how to fully release them from my hold forever, softly.

The most difficult lesson of this subject came in the form of my exceptional type of motherhood, atypical in its shape of two young children along two very different places of the autism spectrum, supported by my bent but unbroken self—a late self-diagnosed neurodivergent woman herself still figuring out the next steps to take on her often-twisting path.

Oh, and there were many, many hot tears that I offered to no one but myself in response for such a long time...

Not from a grief in who my children are, but from the grief of us living in this world that can never truly understand nor come to fully embrace and accomodate who the two of them (and yes, all three of us) are as people of worth and value.

And behind these tears also was a bitter-tasting sadness from feelings of having lost my grasp on a life that I would never have a chance to live going forward... Bile, salt, acid, and even a bit of blood punctuated plenty of my moments spent spiraling near the threat of total loss of stability.

Witnessing the regressions in functionality, the missed milestones, and threapy struggles was more than enough to crumble even the most solid of women, and I made a living of sitting with this daily, consistently. Until the humbling nature of life intervened to further bend me nearly to breaking and far too weakened to shoulder the immense weight of what I faced without proper modification…

With a head hanging low and sweat beading across my upper lip, I finally cast off the burden of all of my prior assumptions of what my life must appear like in order to be a valid one.

What rushed in to fill the spaces left by my releasing was not emptiness. It was instead a level of clarity that I had never known before as a mother. At first I felt very naked and unsafe as if placed right in the center of the allegorical Gardens of Eden after failing the lure of temptation. But I soon enough recognized the sensation for what it truly was—a complete unfamiliarity with who I was at my foundation.

I began a practice of molding this formless and void thing without light into an intricately carved work of living art that I continue to lovingly chip away at today, as the medium of this masterpiece is flux itself. But it still holds.

It is sustained not by the rigid architecture I once believed necessary for the fullness of my joy, but by something far more elemental—by breath, by presence, by the radical act of showing up each day to what is, rather than what I imagined should be.

Some days I still taste the salt and bile and blood. Some days the weight returns and I wonder if I’ve actually learned anything at all. But even on those days, I know that am different now.

My two children nor myself are broken things in need of fixing, as I have always known. We are constantly circling back to meet our new selves just as everyone is, and I hope for a world that wakes up to this truth.

With Total Acceptance,

What have you had to release in order to truly see yourself?

I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments or the Anonymous Share Box.

💬 Leave a Comment

Anonymous Share Box

Design a life that feels like your own, even in the DEEPEST SEASONS OF MOTHERHING…

When my children’s diagnoses arrived, they didn’t come with instruction manuals or roadmaps for the emotional terrain ahead. I found myself drowning in questions no one could answer, grieving futures I’d never mourned, and searching for community in a world that felt suddenly foreign. The silence was deafening. The isolation, suffocating.

So I built the bridge I needed but couldn’t find.

Join Our Community

Ready to stop just surviving and start actually living?

If you’re exhausted from running on empty, overwhelmed by everyone else’s needs, and secretly wondering if this is all there is to motherhood… I see you. And I made something just for you.

✨ The Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook ✨

This isn’t another “optimize your morning routine” guide. This is a roadmap for women who are ready to remember who they are beneath all the roles they play.

What’s inside:

• Soul-searching prompts that actually unlock clarity (not just pretty journal pages)

• Micro-shifts that create massive change without adding to your to-do list

• Permission slips to prioritize yourself without the guilt

The truth? You weren’t meant to disappear into motherhood. You were meant to expand through it.

Your whole, authentic self is still in there; and she’s just waiting for you to come back home to her.

👇 Get your free workbook and refuse to stay stuck:

Yes Please, I’m Ready to Exit Survival Mode

(Instant download, plus receive my regular doses of self-growth, support, and real stories that actually matter)

Free Workbook

You’re getting this email because you signed up for the Inhabitable inbox publication. Some links may be affiliate links, which means I might earn a little reward (at no extra cost to you!) if you shop through them. I only share things I truly love & think you will too, & my sponsored sections will all be clearly labeled.

Be a happier autism mom. 🪄 Radically alchemizing motherhood reshaped by autism into a joyful life that feels deeply mine. Bi-weekly submissions full of authentic self-discovery & personal growth 🌱 along a grounded venture of life design beyond caregiving. About

➕ Subscribe

I remember lying down on the exam table while I excitedly (almost manic) told my OBGYN of the future plans that I and my now-Husband were attempting to pull off together as a couple mad in our love for each other...

“We’re going to sign the Lease together this week, and I already have furniture from before, and it’ll be his first time living with a woman outside of his parents’ house, and the cats are going to have a blast with all of the extra space, and, and, AND...

The Doctor patiently waited and listened to the full euphoric dialogue sustained by my pressured speech. She politely smiled at me in a warm way, as if very pleased, and replied, “Why, it sounds to me like you’re... building a life.“

And I absolutely WAS doing so right then, still fresh in my early twenties... My ideal constantly played and re-played itself out in my mind all day while I would adaptively daydream myself away from any looming troubles. I was well-protected by a heavy shield of all wonderful possibilities and hope.

...SO, what happened to all of that?..

Where did the good-feeling anticipation of my biggest dreams delivered run off to? Or perhaps like some scientific law, it might not have just disappeared... but actually been conserved, and only altered in its form? Then I’d be able to rely on an equation or some formula to sum up the solution to this for me.

Truly, I can confirm that the dreams I once had for my life on that exam table (and elsewhere) have not all ended... I know so because of the very simplest fact that I can ever prove to anyone. It’s only because my life is NOT over yet that I am able to place one hopeful foot in front of the other to greet the reality that meets me.

Yes, I can admit that the appearance of the life that I now live holds very little resemblance to the perfect visions that would play out in the daydream states of my younger years. I’ve since been shaped by a trillion brute and beautiful touches. But each new day brings with it all the opportunity there is for real magick to be worked for me, by me.

You can only come to the table and use the cards that you’re dealt... But when you, for possibly the first time, see yourself as playing a game just like all the rest of us, ease and flow can then enter in.

Suddenly, you can smile again and enjoy the moment for what it is. And you can hope for a better hand during the next round that plays. Really read your cards for the messages that they hold inside for only you and only at this time. They have faces like you and I do afterall.

This is such a beautiful game to play when you learn the secret that no one can actually be a Winner! This might not be the lesson you were looking to learn.

Designing a life that looks like you and that fits around all of your edges just right is an artistic and a creative venture to enjoy, not get right. There’s no trick involved in the pursuit of what naturally pleases you, although it will at times feel like real magick. My best and last point of guidance to you is to never let yourself cease to daydream. This is the substance of the most important building material you will need in designing the masterful work that is your life.

Many Thanks,

Your Life Design Prompt:

Right now, feel free to give yourself permission to daydream again—but with a twist… Instead of ruminating over a different ideal life, daydream about the real life you currently have, right where you are:

What is a small, tangible thing that you could add, modify, or remove that would make your current reality feel more deeply yours?..

Maybe it’s finally hanging that art piece you’ve been meaning to frame for ages. Maybe it’s saying ‘No’ to something that’s found its way onto your calendar that drains you. Maybe it’s texting someone special that you’ve been meaning to reach out to for some reason.

And know this: You are not starting over. You are not behind. You’re in a heady state of mid-build, and the scaffolding is still up... And that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Keep daydreaming. Keep building. The magick is in the doing, not the done.

💬 Leave a Comment

I have now built the space I SO desperately needed at my lowest points, and it’s for moms and female caregivers of neurodivergent special needs children to experience an authentically joyful life of their own in a life-giving, nourishing environment.

Take a peek inside of my membership community, UnCommon Momma:

UnCommon Design is a publication exploring identity, joy, and personal growth through honest storytelling. Subscribe to receive regular posts in your inbox or share a community where your whole story belongs.

📤 Share UnCommon Design

Be a happier autism mom. 🪄 Radically alchemizing motherhood reshaped by autism into a joyful life that feels deeply mine. Bi-weekly submissions full of authentic self-discovery & personal growth 🌱 along a grounded venture of life design beyond caregiving. About

➕ Subscribe

It’s crossed my mind many times,

But just like with any decent parent of multiple children, the thought of having a “favorite child” unsettles my stomach as I recoil at the thought... And when one or more of your children is special needs and autistic (as is in my own family that includes two young children on the autism spectrum), the idea of a favorite offspring (for whatever reasoning) gets downright nauseating...

AND infuriatingly simple to comprehend and sympathize with by myself...

Think with me for a moment. We’d all like to unwaveringly believe in all certainty that a parent of multiple children canNOT regard one child in particular as their favorite among the kids collectively... BUT we ALL then must come to avert our eyes as we silently acknowledge within the deepest parts of ourselves that this ideal just simply isn’t the case in our reality, that someone most definitely can—and many, many do—have a favorite child, sometimes even blatantly so as to be bitterly witnessed by the children themselves and the public.

Are you potentially a favorite child of your parents, as I can easily come to admittance about myself in my younger years?.. Or did you perhaps ocupy a psychological role or archetype in opposition to the favorite? The Scapegoat, maybe (as I curiously also have taken up in identity after rather ungracefully falling to a crash from the Number 1 place in my young adulthood)?

As human beings, we’re promised many occasions of falling short of our ideals in life. This is our destiny whether we become parents or not. We all have felt envy, anger, and other unflattering emotions that we avoid making public news of, and each of us have acted on our ugly impulses in some capacity, to be sure. Just an honest glance around at The World circling beneath our feet reinforces this narrative of our inevitable imperfection and shortcomings as fallen humans.

But what is there to also highlight in the case of parental failing in the form of holding one of their multiple children as superior to another of theirs?.. What if this parent actually has a favorite child, and what if one of those children-at-odds happen to be legally disabled, special needs, and diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder?..

Do we:

1. Automatically expect that the typical child must naturally be the favorite?

2. Wonder if the neurodivergent child instead might actually be the favorite?

3. Wag our fingers and shake our heads in judgement of this parent?

4. Silently accept our inner feelings of understanding and sympathy (mixed with—just a dash of—our nausea)?..

5. OR, actually a combination of any of the above possible scenarios?

I do NOT favor my verbal child over my non-verbal child.

And likewise, I don’t consider my less-typical child to be any more special than my more typical child.

(… Will Be Continued)

Until Part 2,

💬 Leave a Comment

UnCommon Design is a publication exploring identity, joy, and personal growth through honest storytelling. Subscribe to receive regular posts in your inbox or share a community where your whole story belongs.

📤 Share Post

Ready to stop just surviving and start actually living?

If you’re exhausted from running on empty, overwhelmed by everyone else’s needs, and secretly wondering if this is all there is to motherhood… I see you. And I made something just for you.

✨ The Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook ✨

This isn’t another “optimize your morning routine” guide. This is a roadmap for women who are ready to remember who they are beneath all the roles they play.

What’s inside:

• Soul-searching prompts that actually unlock clarity (not just pretty journal pages)

• Micro-shifts that create massive change without adding to your to-do list

• Permission slips to prioritize yourself without the guilt

The truth? You weren’t meant to disappear into motherhood. You were meant to expand through it.

Your whole, authentic self is still in there; and she’s just waiting for you to come back home to her.

👇 Get your free workbook and refuse to stay stuck:

Yes Please, I’m Ready to Exit Survival Mode

(Instant download, plus receive my regular doses of self-growth, support, and real stories that actually matter)

Free Workbook

Be a happier autism mom. 🪄 Radically alchemizing motherhood reshaped by autism into a joyful life that feels deeply mine. Bi-weekly submissions full of authentic self-discovery & personal growth 🌱 along a grounded venture of life design beyond caregiving. About

➕ Subscribe

Stay with me, folks:

I currently interrupt my own regular-enough cadence of publishing my very honest newsletter-first blog/journal email publication community here on Substack to give you all a much-deserved glimpse behind my little unplanned hiatus that is going on...

I have NOT jumped from any tall structure or come to a place of being unable to tolerate anymore of this uncommon lifestyle of my own design... I instead just have been busy being aggressively thrown around the rather new wrestling mat of my own life’s circumstances:

Think: a blip of returning financial worry rapidly followed by a sudden windfall (Mo’ money DOES = mo’ problems, as they say), a 6 year-old’s birthday party and elsewhere behavior during ongoing trials of different Rx regimens for what must be AuDHD, The Great Tables of life’s flux turning rather dramatically (and at hyper-speed) instantly causing vertigo while reminding me of The World Tarot card (which I have indeed pulled during a self-reading recently), grinding along the relentlessly gritty terrain as the solopreneur behind my new membership/community for special needs and autism moms and female caregivers called UnCommon Momma, navigating scary Big School transitions with my firstborn as a fresh-faced Kindergartener, ordering pricey weighted vests to trial at the request of the Special Instructor for my second child... and the list is ever-growing. I could easily go on, if you can imagine.

I encourage you, Dearest Reader of mine to stay with me a little longer as I end my unintended break from writing very soon coming up here...

My very next email letter to you, which is currently being finalized for publishing, will be on the topic of having a “favorite child” (only this time, it’s the autism spectrum edition).

And here’s a teaser for you until that time we see each other again:

I’m back! I’m real… And life is still spinning so fast. My To-Do list hasn’t gotten any shorter. But writing this and knowing that you’re on the other end has reminded me of why I started this passion project of mine in the first place.

Let’s keep going at it. Together. The real conversations are just getting started, and next time, we’re talking about the thing that every parent thinks about… but never speaks of.

Don’t miss it.

💌 Subscribe

💬 Leave a Comment

Ready to stop just surviving and start actually living?

If you're exhausted from running on empty, overwhelmed by everyone else's needs, and secretly wondering if this is all there is to motherhood… I see you. And I made something just for you.

✨ The Survival Mode Exit Strategy Workbook ✨

This isn't another "optimize your morning routine" guide. This is a roadmap for women who are ready to remember who they are beneath all the roles they play.

What's inside:

• Soul-searching prompts that actually unlock clarity (not just pretty journal pages)

• Micro-shifts that create massive change without adding to your to-do list

• Permission slips to prioritize yourself without the guilt

The truth? You weren't meant to disappear into motherhood. You were meant to expand through it.

Your whole, authentic self is still in there; and she's just waiting for you to come back home to her.

👇 Get your free workbook and refuse to stay stuck:

Yes Please, I'm Ready to Exit Survival Mode

(Instant download, plus receive my regular doses of self-growth, support, and real stories that actually matter)

Free Workbook

Your Fellow UnCommon One,

UnCommon Design is a publication exploring identity, joy, and personal growth through honest storytelling. Subscribe to receive regular posts in your inbox or share a community where your whole story belongs.

📤 Share Post

Episode Overview

In this heartfelt episode, I dive deep into something that's been weighing on my heart: how so many of us incredible caregivers have put our creative dreams on the back burner, thinking we have to choose between caring for our neurodiverse children and nurturing our artistic souls. I share my own beautiful personal story of finding my way back to my creative passions, not despite my caregiving journey, but because of it. I explore the science behind why creativity isn't selfish but essential for our wellbeing, and I give you five practical strategies you can start using this week to weave creativity back into your daily life. This episode is for every momma who's ever looked at an old paintbrush, dusty piano, or forgotten craft supplies and wondered if those dreams are lost forever – spoiler alert: they're not!

What’s Inside

• My inspiring transformation from an online business owner who put away her laptop to creating UnCommon Momma – a community celebrating female neurodivergent caregivers

• The fascinating research showing how just 45 minutes of creative activity can lower our stress hormones and literally rewire our brains for resilience

• Five micro-creativity integration strategies designed specifically for busy caregivers, including how to "stack" creative time with activities you're already doing

Featured Insights

"Your creativity isn't a luxury you can't afford – it's medicine you can't afford to live without."

"You're not choosing between being a devoted caregiver and being a creative person – you get to do both. You get to BE both."

Resources Mentioned

• Dr. Girija Kaimal's research on art therapy and cortisol reduction

• The UnCommon Design email community

• The UnCommon Design Podcast

• The UnCommon Momma membership community

Rate, Review, & Reflect

If this episode resonated with your soul, we'd be honored if you'd leave us a rating and review. Your words help other women find their way back to themselves.

Questions for Reflection:

• Tell us about a creative passion you had before becoming a caregiver, or something you've always wanted to try.

• Share a photo, a story, or even just a few words about how creativity shows up in your daily routine.

• If you're struggling to find your creative spark again, let us know what's blocking you.

Leave a comment

✉️ Email Address: hello@uncommonmomma.com
💬 Text-in Number: (601) 589-1027 
📞 Dial-in Number: (641) 715-3800 Access Code: 250772 

Your message may be featured in an upcoming episode (anonymously or with credit—just let us know your preference when you contact us). Your experiences matter and help other parents feel less alone.

Connect With UnCommon Design

• Join the Community: Become part of the UnCommon Design email community and The UnCommon Design Podcast for exclusive content and a private community of parents who understand.

• Leave a Review: Help other autism parents find this supportive space by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform

The UnCommon Design Podcast celebrates the complex journey of raising neurodivergent children while reclaiming our identities beyond caregiving. Hosted by Cheniece Patrick, mother of two neurodivergent children and advocate for parental well-being.

Subscribe now

Be a happier autism mom. 🪄 Radically alchemizing motherhood reshaped by autism into a joyful life that feels deeply mine. Bi-weekly submissions full of authentic self-discovery & personal growth 🌱 along a grounded venture of life design beyond caregiving. About

➕ Subscribe

I’ll confess something to you right now: I’ve never been a very popular person in any of my social circles growing up… And it’s never bothered me enough along my journey to truly make an effort towards changing that fact. I’ve always been quite content with only being “popular enough” for the people whom I actually cared about to know who I was. And it was definitely a smaller collection of individuals who were in my corner compared to most others, but I have rarely experienced feelings of lack or want for more. I felt like I was surrounded by just the right number of My People.

I was invited out to a church service by a family member just recently. I was originally amused by their invitation, being how the both of us were well aware of the nature of my spiritual leanings and what my practice of it makes me look like to outsiders (it rhymes with “itch”). But the relative insisted, even making the case for how it would be a benefit to my children who “need prayer”.

Having navigated such conversations before, I calmly explained to her how I wasn’t declining the prayers, but instead I was choosing to avoid the overwhelm attached to the required level of hypervigilance for such public outings, not to mention the whole additional person I would need to accompany me for practical assistance and support of many kinds, the uninformed public opinion of my children behaving badly due to my lack of parenting them properly, and then the questions from that same uninformed public that I didn’t want to answer or clarify with education, the cascade of rude and blatant stares, the awkward silence following me and my kids around wherever we go…. I could easily go on and on.

My relative ended up only disagreeing with my reasoning (and strongly so), thus not even understanding a little bit about the experience of what happens to be my daily reality. All of that on top of their short notice given and also their entitled stance of me somehow owing them my approval and presence for the Friends and Family Day observance at their place of worship.

Plus, their church was absolutely NOT attended by a community of My People.

And I’ve been ruminating over just that theme lately: community… How it shows up in our lives, how we come to discover it for ourselves, and how often we forget that we actually do require it in some certain capacity.

I used to carry so much stuff around on my on for many, many years during an all-too common and perpetual juggle of my marriage, my two children, their diagnosis, my work and craft… Back in those days I’d quickly remind myself that I was strong enough to bear it all AND retain my sanity in the end… And maybe I was, but having so much strength without support can very quickly develop into a case of classic survival mode.

After some time and a much-needed shift in my mindset, I realized that having a community of My People was not the luxury that had I framed it as, it was actually a lifeline.

It’s the life-giving text message from another special needs mom reassuring me from experience that I am indeed strong enough to survive another day of this life. It’s the hope of seeing another mom with a big, genuine grin out authentically enjoying the time she is spending with her neurodivergent child because she has found a pace and place in life that regularly imparts joy. It’s the release in being able to admit that: no, you’re really not doing okay these days, and then not having to explain every reason why because your company already intimately understands millions of reasons themselves.

Community doesn’t erase the hard things that we are faced with, but it definitely can make them seem lighter by comparison. It also opens up a space for joy, laughter, perspective, and even rest to enter in.

I truly don’t believe that we, as people, were meant to go up against our lives all alone… Instead, we’re called to acknowledge each other as we all face our own truth, to be present to hold another up at the needed times, to remind each other of our inner strength during trials, and to witness each other’s personal growth. And that belief lives at the very center of every effort I make towards building out the special space that I am currently tasked with. This is true whether it’s through the writing of this email publication, the recording of its companion podcast, the different resources that I routinely create, or the membership experience that I am carefully curating.

If you’re craving the connection to be found within a community full of Your People, let this be your reminder: You don’t have to idly wait by for what looks like the ideal people at the ideal timing… Be active and start small. Reach out. Share your story. Let yourself be seen.

And if you happen to need a community of your own right now… ..well, just know that you’re already a part of one, and it is here.

💌 Subscribe

With Gratitude,

UnCommon Design is a publication exploring identity, joy, and personal growth through honest storytelling. Subscribe to receive regular posts in your inbox or share a community where your whole story belongs.

💗 P.S. You don't have to navigate this journey alone.

If you're a mother or caregiver raising a neurodivergent child and feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or unseen, UnCommon Momma was created specifically for you. This private membership community focuses on supporting your healing, growth, and wellbeing in a world that often overlooks your needs.

What you'll find inside:

• Peer support from others who truly understand your experience

• Guided self-care practices and wellness resources

• Access to a private podcast and live community gatherings

• A safe space where your identity and needs matter

There’s a Forever Free tier to dip your toe into at absolutely no risk because everyone deserves to belong. Click here to join us ↓

Free Community

There's something magical that happens when the rest of the house finally goes quiet... For those of us who spend our days wearing a hundred different hats, these rare late-night moments become a secret doorway back to ourselves.

In this deeply personal episode, I explore why these stolen moments of solitude can offer profound clarity and healing for us who navigate life in constant service to others. You'll discover how to create your own pocket of peace, even when the time feels impossible to find.

What’s Inside

• Why late-night solitude feels so sacred for caregivers

• How to have an honest conversation with yourself (and actually hear the answers)

• Why you don't need daily self-care routines to reconnect with who you are

• How to create meaningful moments of presence in the midst of constant demand

Featured Insights

“During the day, I'm constantly shapeshifting. One minute I'm mediating a sibling squabble, the next I'm switching into business mode for a client call, then I'm back to being the family scheduler, the snack distributor, the homework helper. Sound familiar?”

“Here's what I've discovered about these late-night hours: they open up the most honest conversation I have all day—the one between me and myself.”

“There's something about the rarity that makes them even more special. I've stopped shaming myself for not making "self-time" happen every single day.”

Resources Mentioned

• The UnCommon Design Newsletter

Rate, Review, and Reflect

If this episode resonated with your soul, we'd be honored if you'd leave us a rating and review. Your words help other women find their way back to themselves.

Questions for Reflection:

• When do you feel most like yourself?

• What would you do with 30 minutes of completely uninterrupted time?

• How can you create a small pocket of peace in your current routine?

Leave a comment

✉️ Email Address: hello@uncommonmomma.com
💬 Text-in Number: (601) 589-1027 
📞 Dial-in Number: (641) 715-3800 Access Code: 250772 

Your message may be featured in an upcoming episode (anonymously or with credit—just let us know your preference when you contact us). Your experiences matter and help other parents feel less alone.

Connect With UnCommon Design

• Join the Community: Become part of the UnCommon Design community for exclusive content and a private community of parents who understand.

• Leave a Review: Help other autism parents find this supportive space by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform

The UnCommon Design Podcast celebrates the complex journey of raising neurodivergent children while reclaiming our identities beyond caregiving. Hosted by Cheniece Patrick, mother of two neurodivergent children and advocate for parental well-being.

Subscribe now

Be a happier autism mom. 🪄 Radically alchemizing motherhood reshaped by autism into a joyful life that feels deeply mine. Bi-weekly submissions full of authentic self-discovery & personal growth 🌱 along a grounded venture of life design beyond caregiving. About

➕ Subscribe

Hi there, my Lovelies.

Since you've last heard from me, I've been busy making some intentional and very deliberate moves towards nurturing more calmness... Even the word itself sounds so soothing departing my mouth in a breathy two syllables at this moment. And this is a far deviation from the quality of my granular, day-to-day activities that involve me showing up for my two extraordinary children in a capacity that they require.

On just yesterday, I found myself mildly threatening one of them with some absurd form of discipline when I could no longer continue to see and hear their stimming behavior continue to disturb the gathering of people that I was amidst as they all attempted to look past the ordeal. Bless them.

I used to frequently reason with myself that I'll surely "get the hang of" my parenting role and feel much better while performing it when things manage to calm down. And without any research being necessary, I certainly know that this thought is an all-too common one among mothers everywhere of typical and neurodivergent children alike.

But the glaring truth, which is so very difficult to face for all of us, is that our lives may never truly calm down to the degree that we're imagining or that we'd like for them to... But thankfully, that doesn't mean that knowing some measure of peace is necessarily forever out of reach for us.

I like to entertain the idea that chaos itself is not a true enemy to us... I instead reframe this uncomfortable state of the human condition as something to which our relationship with it matters more than the actual condition itself... The fact here is that there are several facets, or natures, to the element of peace: There is definitely an external sort of peace to appreciate that is heavily dependent on the outside factors in our environment, which are always fluctuating, transforming, and evolving. There is also a gentle type of internal peace to hold out hope for that I have come to discover intimately and experience in my own life.

The eye of the storm is still, after all...

And as for practically anchoring this quote strongly to your daily life, you can leverage the use of a few different tools and practices to imbue a low-effort "micro-peace" into those messier moments in life that we all must endure:

1. Energetic Grounding Rituals: Quick practices such as body scanning, grounding outside in nature through the feet, and the method of your hand placed on your heart can be employed within seconds of time. I personally choose to perform a mini-smudge with a small stick Palo Santo, or simply light incense.

2. Gentle Affirmations: Try focusing on the following statements as you repeat them compellingly to yourself: “I can be soft in a hard moment... Even now, I am worthy of ease.”

3. Peaceful Journal/Thought Prompts: Take some time to explore your inner thoughts in response to questions like “What part of this can I release control over?” and “What does peace look like for me right now? Not ideally, but honestly?..”

Too often there is a visceral guilt that we caregivers feel in our gut when it comes to our desire for rest or quiet in those moments when chaos comes calling for us. But be reassured, your own peace isn't selfish in the least. And pursuing such is actually a radical act of self-protection. It's necessary. Revolutionary. Always know that your peace is not the luxury that we frame it to be in our society today... It is your lifeline.

My guidance is for you to move away from a place of ideals and perfectionism, and to seek presence instead. This shift in perception may not be intuitive to arrive at for us, but it is my personal experience that it is life-giving... So, choose to move throughout your days with an air of grace, even when it's messy. Hold that intention close. And, if you’re reading this with dishes in the sink, toys on the floor, and a to-do list growing in your head, know that peace can still find you here and now.

Peace out ;)

UnCommon Design is a publication exploring identity, joy, and personal growth through honest storytelling. Subscribe to receive regular posts in your inbox or share a community where your whole story belongs.

💌 Subscribe

📤 Share UnCommon Design

💗 P.S. You don't have to navigate this journey alone.

If you're a mother or caregiver raising a neurodivergent child and feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or unseen, UnCommon Momma was created specifically for you. This private membership community focuses on supporting your healing, growth, and wellbeing in a world that often overlooks your needs.

What you'll find inside:

• Peer support from others who truly understand your experience

• Guided self-care practices and wellness resources

• Access to a private podcast and live community gatherings

• A safe space where your identity and needs matter

Learn more & join the waitlist here; PLUS, receive an exclusive discount when the doors finally open. Your supportive community is waiting.

Join Wait List