Where Am I in This Story?

A journal prompt for the mothers unraveling quietly

There are days I can’t tell if I’m grieving, dissociating, or just tired enough to mistake silence for peace.

When you’re parenting a child in mental health crisis—especially as they become an adult—you don’t just manage their pain.
You absorb it.
You track it like weather.
You rearrange your own nervous system around it.

And somewhere in the middle of survival, you disappear.

I didn’t realize how far I’d drifted from myself until I sat down with a blank page and asked:

“What hurts the most right now in my relationship with my child?”

I didn’t write beautifully. I didn’t write clearly. I wrote like someone who’d been holding her breath for years.

And what poured out wasn’t just sadness—it was grief, guilt, rage, fear, resentment, exhaustion, hope.
All tangled up like wires in a storm.

This is your invitation.

You don’t need to be “strong” to write.
You don’t need to know where to begin.
You just have to show up—to your own heart, to your own truth.

If you’re a mother living inside the storm, I want to offer you this prompt:

“What hurts the most right now in my relationship with my child?”

Don’t edit.
Don’t soften it for anyone else’s comfort.
Write like no one will ever read it.

And if you want more space to explore, here are a few additional prompts:

Optional Prompts (Write Whatever Surfaces)

• What boundaries do I feel afraid to set, and why?

• What part of me feels most helpless—and what would that part say if it had a voice?

• What do I wish they knew or understood about me?

• What does my healing look like, regardless of their choices?

• If I could say what I truly feel—but never say out loud—what would I say?

You are allowed to write it all.

You can rage.
You can confess.
You can grieve.
You can want things to be different.
You can feel everything and still love your child.

Loving someone doesn’t mean tolerating destruction.
You’re not abandoning them by protecting yourself.
You’re modeling a form of love that says,
“You’re worthy of healing—but I can’t let you destroy me in the process.”

When you’re ready, you can share your writing—with me, with someone safe, or no one at all.
What matters is that you find yourself again in the story.

You are still here.
Let’s begin from there.

Consider this a permission slip for every mother stuck in the in-between.