I Get to Have a Turn Too

My son has been calling me a “badass bitch” and a “mama gorilla” lately. Other people from the outside might not understand it or may even find it offensive, but I don’t. 

He says it with love and a smirk—like he’s proud. Like he sees something in me now that he didn’t before: strength, fire, presence.

And honestly? He’s right.

But what he doesn’t know is just how hard I fought to become this version of myself.

In the summer of 2023, I broke silently. 

I didn’t burn out—I shattered. I had full-body panic attacks that lasted all day and night. I went weeks without sleep. I was terrified I was losing my mind. Terrified of losing my mom to dementia. Terrified of my oldest leaving for college. I felt like I was unraveling, and I didn’t know if I’d ever come back from it.

It wasn’t logical. It didn’t make sense.

But as a trauma-informed therapist, I understood exactly what was happening.

My body had accumulated so much unresolved pain living in survival-mode over the years that it simply couldn’t hold it anymore. I believe some of that pain was preverbal and perhaps even generational…a legacy of women staying silent and trying to not rock the boat lived in my cells and they wanted to break free.

Those two events—grieving my mother in real time while preparing to let my oldest son go—pushed me over the edge more than I want to admit and I had to face a part of myself I’d exiled long ago—the part that was scared, exhausted, fragile, and deeply wounded. I had to meet my shadow. I had to stop abandoning her every time she got too loud or uncomfortable for other people to hold. I had convinced myself I’d done the work, but self-deceit runs deep when survival depends on it.

That’s when I realized once again, how much I had given to everyone else while silently falling apart.

I had shown up for so many people—holding their pain, making space for their grief, being their emotional anchor. But when I looked around to see who was holding me, it was mostly silence. 

And worst of all? I had been the one who had abandoned me the most. 

In small, quiet realizations over the months that followed, I began to see just how long I had been ignoring what I needed and making myself smaller and smaller. 

That’s when the rage started to rise.

Not destructive rage. Sacred rage. A slow, burning fire that had lived beneath years of self-abandonment and silence. Rage over not being protected. Rage over being unsupported, not being truly known or seen. Rage over being a flotation device for others in water I was drowning in. Rage over betrayals, emotional labor, guilt, and shrinking to make space for others.

And when unjust things continued to happen to my Autistic son that Fall of 2023, the fire had somewhere to go.

I began to fight for him with a force I didn’t know I had. Yes, I had fought for him before, but this was different, this was a kind of fight that would not back down, would not relent, and demanded to be heard until someone listened. Because no one had ever fought for me like that. And I wasn’t going to let him grow up thinking he didn’t matter.

That rage has become one of my greatest teachers. 

And no—I’m not “letting it go” anymore because someone believes I’m too sensitive, too intense, because someone else believes “it is what it is” and I’m taking things too seriously. I’ve learned phrases like that are exploitative and generally designed to try to control and put a woman in her place. Those phrases are said because others don’t know how to handle their own emotional discomfort when they see pain so they put their own needs above the person in front of them who is in pain, so they “feel” like their helping when really they’re only helping themselves. 

Emotional pain doesn’t need pithy advice, emotional pain simply asks to seen, held, and truly known and accepted before it can begin to dissipate. That phrase frankly is complete and utter bullshit when it’s given as unwanted and unsolicited advice-especially for women.

We’re told to forgive, forget, smile more, be nice, stay small. We’re told we’re too emotional, too intense, too sensitive, too much—or not enough. And then we wonder why we’re anxious, depressed, disconnected, or struggling with autoimmune issues as women. 

It’s because we’re inflamed. 

We’re holding generations of anger down in our bodies for others’ comfort. But the cost for it is significant because when we emotionally contract, we physically contract too.

I’ve started listening to my body more. And now every time I speak the truth without backing down—every time I hold the line on what I know is right and until justice prevails—I feel the fire settle. I feel something in me get lighter. And that’s how I know I’m on the right path because more and more I let my body, my heart, and my gut lead the way and let others see me however they choose to, no longer being controlled by their narratives or words, but instead led by my body and what I know to be true deep inside.

Our bodies are our North Star. It always knows and it never lies. Particularly for women, who are, by design biologically and hormonally, more connected to their emotions and intuitions. They’ve learned throughout history to ignore it because it’s threatening, often times by men who struggle to understand something that often defies logic. They’ve learned to ignore their intuition and what can’t be seen by the visible eye, lest they be called a witch, burned at the stake, or be accused of being crazy, weird, and neurotic, but there’s a huge cost that comes with that kind of self-betrayal.

I’m not the same woman I was before all of this. I’ve reclaimed my space, my inner knowing, and my spine. And I’m finally saying:

I get to have a turn too. I get to be supported, I get to matter. My son and my own little inner child have taught me that.

And when my son calls me a badass bitch, I grin back and say: “Kiss my ass.” And he laughs. 

If you’re walking through something similar—if you’re grieving, unraveling, carrying too much, and feel alone—I see you.

Healing isn’t linear and mine has been nothing short of it. It’s messy. Emotional. Sacred. And it’s possible.