(A quick note before we begin: this letter is about a public Reddit post. I’ve left out her username and the link on purpose. She asked strangers a question at her lowest, and I’d rather not send any more of them to her door.)
There’s this article… I read it at 6-something in the morning, in that narrow window between making coffee and the house waking up…
One of my kids was still asleep. The other was in the next room, awake, humming something with no tune to it, and I remember thinking don’t come out yet, just a few more minutes. Which is its own confession, if you’re listening. (I suspect you are.)
I had yesterday’s clothes on. I hadn’t brushed my teeth. Last night’s dishes were still sitting on the counter, and I was standing there scrolling instead of washing them, and I didn’t even gasp when I got to her sentence.
Because I recognized her.
Not the details. My life doesn’t look like hers. But that particular flatness in the sentences?.. The way she says the worst thing she has ever thought and then asks, politely, whether she’s the asshole. I KNOW that voice. It’s the voice of a woman who has been screaming quietly inside her own head for a long while.
A few years back, there was a version of me who would have read that post at the wrong hour and believed every word of the verdict. So let me tell you what I actually felt once the recognition passed. It was NOT relief. It was something much closer to grief. Here was a mother who had every bit of the help she’d been told would fix it, and she was still drowning... and the internet’s very first instinct was to check whether she deserved it.
SO, let me back up.
The post
A 25-year-old mom wrote to Reddit. Two kids under four. Her daughter is severely autistic, and her son is mildly so (so far). She’s divorced and working part-time, with child support, a daily maid paid for by her ex-husband, and free childcare from her own parents.
And she wrote the sentence that nearly every one of us has at least half-thought, alone in the dark, and never said.
If she hadn’t been “saddled” with these two, she’d “probably be a CEO right now.”
Then she got to the part that had the internet sharpening its knives. She shoved her two-year-old away when he came in for a hug. Roughly. She wrote that down herself, in her own words, and then asked whether it meant something was wrong with her.
The comments were the point
Most of the comments weren’t for her. They were about her. Strangers deciding, one reply at a time, whether she had crossed over from burnout into something that deserves to be reported.
Some people tried. A few named the actual terror of receiving two autism diagnoses before your own thirtieth birthday. But that corner of the thread was quiet next to the other corner, the one performing its shock for an audience.
I have been a mother in a hard place, and I have been a stranger reading about one. I know which version of me is braver.
It’s NOT the reader.
She had already called herself the monster, in her own words, before she ever asked. The comments didn’t tell her anything new. They only taught her to stop saying it out loud.
Why autism mom resentment gets under my skin
Here is what I keep coming back to: not one comment convinced her she was a monster. She already had that covered. She got there first... in her own words, before she ever hit post.
What the comments actually did was make her the subject of a verdict. And a verdict is the most reliable way I know to make sure a woman never says any of it out loud again, to anyone who could genuinely help her.
Underneath all of that judgment sat the real reason everyone was arguing. A life shaped this differently is a life you cannot run on the equipment the rest of the world hands you. You can’t. Not with a maid and a co-parent and willing grandparents. What she’s been given is not the map for this terrain.
Read that again (slowly), and then tell me she isn’t still expected to live by the old map anyway. She’s supposed to feel grateful for the maid. For the child support. For the parents who show up. Everyone keeps handing her what you’d give a woman in an ordinary hard stretch... and then wondering why she keeps sinking.
Her resentment isn’t a verdict. It’s information.
I don’t think her confession is monstrous. I think it’s a symptom. More accurately, I think it’s data.
Her dread is telling on her life, NOT on her character. It’s the feeling of inhabiting something that doesn’t fit the shape she’s actually in. Which means that, in this case, it’s a compass. Not a tidy one, and not a kind one, but the only thing in that entire post pointing anywhere true.
You can love your autistic children fiercely and STILL resent the particular shape your motherhood has taken. Those two things live in the same body all the time. They aren’t a contradiction. They’re a woman carrying more than any one woman was built to carry alone.
🪄 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 becoming a subscriber, and come radically choose yourself alongside the rest of us.
What I want you to take with you, Mom
If you read her post and something in your chest whispered oh... I’ve been there, and then shame slammed the door on it before you could finish the thought, listen to me.
That door is not moral. It’s not holy. It’s the world’s voice inside your head, telling you what a mother is allowed to admit out loud.
AND your resentment, when it comes, is not proof that you’ve failed her. It’s proof that a real woman is inside this, holding something heavy, with almost nowhere to set it down.
So I’ll be the place. Not because I have answers, and not to “fix” you. But because a woman can’t hear how she actually feels over that much static, and most of us never get to say the true thing without paying for it.
The room stayed quiet for twenty minutes
That morning, the room stayed quiet for maybe twenty minutes. The humming came out eventually, of course, because it always does. I put the phone down, got out a mug, and fed him the same breakfast he’s had for a year, because that’s all he’ll eat. Nothing in that day was dramatic. No one was rescued. I didn’t even rinse the dishes.
But I thought differently about the woman in that post for the rest of the week. And about myself, honestly, since the two of us aren’t so far apart.
She couldn’t say the true thing in that thread without paying for it. You can, though. Here. In this quiet room, no one is asking whether you’re the asshole.
That’s not the question. It never was.
You’re not doing it wrong, Mom. You ARE using the wrong map for this specific terrain.
If this resonated, if something here named something you’ve been living, I’d love to know. The reply button is always open, and I read everything.
And if you need somewhere to set the heavy thing down, The Alchemy Lounge is my free, private community for mothers like us. No performance. No verdicts. The door is open. Come in, sit down, and stay awhile…
With MUCH warmth,
Cheniece Patrick ♡
P.S. If the word resentment landed somewhere tender, I made the “When You’re Dreading Your Own Life” Guided Journal for exactly this: gentle pages for the feelings we aren’t supposed to have. Here’s one prompt from it to sit with tonight:
Describe what YOUR version of dread feels like...
Not the dramatic kind, the quiet, low, persistent kind. What does it feel like in your body? When does it arrive? What does it feel like to carry it through a day?
✨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…
I wrote more about what dread might actually be trying to tell us right here, if you need it today.
What’s the sentence you’ve been too afraid to say out loud... and who taught you it wasn’t allowed?..
Hit reply or leave a comment. I read every single one, slowly, on purpose.
A few honest questions
❓ Is it normal to resent your autistic child?..
It’s far more common than anyone admits. Resentment usually isn’t about your child at all. It’s about the shape your life has taken and how little support exists for it. You can love your child fiercely and STILL resent the load. Those two things live side by side in a lot of us.
❓ Does resenting motherhood make me a BAD mom?..
No. A feeling isn’t a verdict on your character. Resentment is information: it tells you something in your life is carrying more weight than it was built for. What matters is that you get to say it somewhere safe, so it doesn’t stay locked inside you with nowhere to go.
❓ Why do I still feel resentment when I have help?..
Because help built for an ordinary hard season isn’t always the right help for this one. A maid, a co-parent, or willing grandparents can lighten the logistics without touching the deeper weight of autism motherhood. You’re not ungrateful. You may be using the wrong map for this terrain.
❓ What should I do with my resentment as a special needs mom?..
Start by naming it without punishing yourself for it: in a journal, to one trusted person, or in a community of moms who get it. Get curious about what it’s pointing at. And if the feelings ever turn into fear that you might hurt yourself or your child, please reach out to a doctor or mental health professional right away.
❓ Where can autism moms talk honestly without being judged?..
Look for small, private spaces built for mothers rather than public threads. I created The Alchemy Lounge, a free and private community for moms of neurodivergent and special needs kids, so there’d be one room where the true thing IS allowed.
