this brain, this body, this bloom

i was not born broken. but from the very beginning, i was taught to apologize like i was. my brain has always moved differently—fast, tangled, electric, loud. i felt everything too deeply, asked too many questions, and noticed things others didn’t. and instead of being celebrated, i was silenced. i learned to mask before i even knew what masking was. learned to sit still when my body begged to move. learned to swallow words, needs, emotions—anything that might be too loud, too honest, too me.

there is a quiet cost to being neurodivergent in a world built for sameness. it’s the exhaustion of translating yourself in every room. the heartbreak of wondering if you’re difficult to love or just deeply misunderstood. it’s overstimulation in the grocery store, tears over forgotten schedules, shame tangled in every undone task. it’s apologizing for needing breaks, needing repetition, needing time. and then apologizing again for apologizing too much.

as a mother, the cost doesn’t lessen with time—it shifts. some of my children are grown or growing into themselves, while others are still learning the rhythms of the world. and i’m still here, learning alongside them. parenting with a neurodivergent brain means carrying sensory overwhelm into loud mornings and long nights, into big conversations and everyday chaos. it means interrupting spirals to pack lunches, to mediate arguments, to teach softness while still searching for it myself. but it also means i see them clearly. not just their needs, but their nuances. i mother with ritual, with deep attunement, with love that listens before it fixes. my neurodivergence is not a flaw—it’s a compass. it helps me navigate their storms, because i know what it’s like to live in one.

there’s grief, yes—for the girl who never got to be soft, who thought being easy to love meant erasing herself. but there’s power, too. because she never disappeared. she grew wild inside me, quiet but unyielding, and now she writes with fire. now she mothers with intuition and imperfection and fierce devotion. now she shows up unmasked, even when it’s hard. especially when it’s hard.

this brain, this body, this bloom—none of it is broken. none of it is too much. it is holy. it is whole. and i will never apologize for how i survive the world, or how i soften inside it anyway.

with ink + bloom, 🌻