On Collapse, Community, and the Myth of Doing It Alone

What if I said the difficult truth out loud for all of us?

If you are a parent of a child with special needs, your health directly impacts the health of your child.

The last unsolicited advice a parent of a child with special needs should hear is the always-insulting, “Be sure to take care of yourself, too!”

And yet, the most important solicited, safe, connected, and direct advice I can extend—as a mom of two children with special needs now in their tweens—is this:

Be sure to take care of yourself, too.

If a parent of a child with special needs wants to support said child wholly, that parent must tend to the disparate physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects of self that limit their own embodied wholeness within.

I will quickly go on to provide the obnoxious nuance built into truths that rapidly decay the commodified “self-care” trope-as-truth…

Self-care is not about what we do for ourselves. It is about the state of our nervous system while we attend to our own needs.

And self-care always includes communal care—because a safe nervous system requires connection not just to self, but to others.

When we, as parents of children with special needs, find a pause, take a breath, slow time down, allow ourselves to be in our bodies, listen to the body’s communication spoken through the language of emotions and sensations, empathetically listen to our own feelings and needs, attend to them, and then attend to our children’s needs—we become more aware, attuned, discerning, compassionate, communicative, receptive, and present in safety and connection.

That’s where trust and faith come in: the kind that helps us know our actions on behalf of our children are truly in their best interest.

Self-care is the last line of defense. It is, unfortunately, often the only option for many parents of children with special needs, when any of the essential resources—time, energy, money, tools, and capable and willing others—are a limiting factor.

The faster we can escape self-care triage and find our way to mutual-aid community clinic, the faster our children will be supported to the best of our capacity.

Despite the shiniest, state-of-the-art tools supported by the “leading” {trending} care philosophies, self-care triage is ill-equipped to save a parent circling collapse—often experiencing the near-death bludgeoning of a special needs diagnosis—whereby the body undergoes numerous unendurable fear responses: fight, flight, freeze, faint, fawn, fix, and/or flop… all while their own physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual feelings go suppressed and needs unmet.

Mutual-aid community clinic—precisely because of its elemental equipment and ancient, wisdom-rich, embodied care practices—will never “cure” the special needs, but it will expedite the healing process so that our children’s needs become those we can meet with ease and even pleasure.

Mutual-aid community clinics have quietly served those fortunate enough to remain within life-affirming communities—and the lucky wanderers who stumble upon one, tucked in back alleys or nestled in the liminal edges—for as long as we’ve been more than a single cell.

For me, HETA has been the map.

Rather than a how-to-navigate-the-terrain manual for surrendering control to Western systems that pathologize special needs (often our first healing journey alongside our children), or the “I’ll-do-it-myself” second journey that many of us attempt—HETA, over time, has stopped me from searching altogether.

In the least bypassed manifestorial way, HETA has de-veiled a secret passage to getting my children’s needs met in a way that is sustainable with my capacity to persevere.

The portal to that secret passage is my body—my needs.

HETA has helped me move from awareness into resonant facilitation of my children’s needs, without compromising my own physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being.

It has helped me embody and actuate tangible care practices that contribute to my children’s whole-person healing.

Yesterday, I was actually at the bottom—circling collapse.

For the first time in my life as a parent, I was contemplating extended time away (alone, and not for work), because I had no more capacity to provide for my family’s needs.

I expressed to my family my frustration and told them I was choosing to leave—to get a massage… and possibly spend some time elsewhere.

As I walked away from the house, I felt shame for going to self-care.

HETA helped me become aware I was feeling shame connected to the sensation in my body—a pull down from my heart and up from my gut—helped me name it: spending money we didn’t technically “have,” leaving my also-in-need husband holding the giant shit sandwich, and most of all, my lack of ability to find gratitude / joy / safety / connection / peace… even with my favorite people in my favorite place.

HETA helped me discern the truth: right here, right now, we do have the money.

My husband had given me sincere permission to care for myself.

And my act of self-care was also an act of mutual-aid: the body worker had reached out because she was in need, supporting her daughter’s needs.

Most importantly, HETA allowed me to connect with and process—through tears—the deep sorrow and grief I’ve been holding around the chasm between the life I’m actually living and the one I was sold: the tidy, upwardly mobile family life promised in books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, reinforced by television sitcoms, heartwarming movie montages, and now, the carefully curated feeds of social media.

That version of parenthood—predictable, manageable, and somehow always photogenic—never prepared me for this reality.

And grieving that myth has become part of the work.

The compassionate truth is: we were duped by expectation itself.

I’m grieving the loss of a lie I was told.

I’m dragging around everything that, in actuality, is nothing.

And that big void-ball is taking up all kinds of painful space in my body.

But when I allow the energy of that void to release, I make room for the capacity to persevere with gratitude, joy, safety, connection, and peace—again.

Through HETA, I attracted more mutual-aid than I bargained for.

Fresh off the bus, I ran into “Day Walker,” a jewelry-selling beach shaman with one of the most pure connections to the spiritual realm I’ve ever observed.

He gifted me a ring, which I promptly paid for (though that wasn’t his intent), and an Eagle whistle to the Divine—an intense energetic cleanse on my mutual-aid journey, though I was still naïvely calling it a “self-care” trip.

Halfway to my massage destination, I spotted a new second-hand store. A sweet, pixie-like child sirened me in. It was her mother’s shop.

I overshared.

I found the perfect “Rainy Season” tank.

And instead of being unseen or unheard, the shop owner gave me a chin-up, momma-bear speech and refused to accept payment—a gift.

I argued. She stood firm.

Now, I have a pending coffee date with a mom who also has children around the age of mine.

My massage? Excellent. I received beyond what I paid for—and helped support a mother helping her child succeed at law school, an impressive feat in an under-resourced community.

As I walked down the beach and quickly began to dissociate, a bee stung my foot.

I stopped at the beach bar ahead and received some complimentary ice—though I tipped.

This free, shady spot on the beach I’m writing from revealed itself to me.

Much like our consumable medicines, I can explain until I’m blue in the face or cramped in the fingers the science behind HETA.

And much like our consumable medicines…

HETA is also just magico.

I did return home.

This time, the bus station gifted me a pleasant, connecting conversation with the ticket attendant—a woman who’s been difficult to build even basic rapport with over our four years riding the bus.

And it offered up a small repair gift: cotton candy for the kids.

Today, we began a new roof on the house.

Better protection.

The new roof felt symbolic—an outer layer of safety finally catching up to the inner restructuring we’ve been working so hard to hold.

And it has been a heavenly day.

Foundations of HETA 1:1 guideship open. Seeking hosts for HETA 3-day / 9-hour workshops.