ᴡᴇ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ’ᴛ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ʏᴇᴛ

borrowed calm, nervous systems, and the quiet work of learning to breathe again

i’ve been in chicago for a couple of weeks now.
long enough to notice the light—softer in the mornings, gray and patient in the afternoons.
long enough to hear my own breath again when the house finally goes quiet.
long enough to feel how loud my body becomes when everything else slows down.

this season has been humbling in ways i didn’t anticipate.

here, my body is being met as an ecosystem—brain, nerves, neck, heart, energy—each part calling out, sometimes softly, sometimes shouting. there are names for what’s happening. diagnoses. acronyms.
but what it feels like is simpler: the wires cross, the messages blur, and my body forgets how to follow my lead.

i’ll see a familiar face and lose the thread of the conversation i’m standing in.
i’ll think i’m steady enough to carry the laundry down the stairs—
and instead feel the room tilt, my thoughts scatter.

i hear, “you look great.”
i hear, “i understand—i’ve seen this before.”

and i think: we all look great.
capable. put together. back at it.

but do we feel great?

and if our bodies are still bracing beneath the surface—still catching up, still holding—
we can’t teach our children to feel what we haven’t been given space to practice ourselves.

because this kind of illness lives inside the nervous system—quiet, invisible, easily missed. the cost of pushing through for connection often leaves me more depleted than held.

my body lets me know quickly when it isn’t ready.
tremors ripple through my hands.
my neck tightens.
my head grows heavy, like gravity has doubled.

what follows isn’t sleep so much as a necessary powering down—rest that isn’t indulgent, but essential. it’s been humbling to realize how much effort regulation actually takes.

curtains half drawn.
heat humming softly through pads on my back.
the effort of remembering what i was saying.
the frequent forgetting.

and it’s made something unmistakably clear:

we are still a deeply dysregulated world.

i don’t think we ever fully came back from the shutdowns.
not in our bodies.

we reopened doors.
restarted schedules.
filled calendars again.

but i’m not sure we paused long enough to let our nervous systems catch up to what our lives had just lived through.

children felt it.
parents felt it.
teachers carried it—quietly, consistently, day after day.

years later, we’re moving through a world that feels louder and sharper, while so many bodies are still asking for repair.

i see it everywhere.
in the way parents apologize for needing rest.
in the way teachers soften their voices while pushing through exhaustion.
in the way we keep going when what we need is to stop.

every day, i still ground myself for him.

even when my hands shake.
even when i can’t pick him up.
even when rest replaces play.

i lower my voice.
i slow my movements.
i place my feet on the floor and breathe where he can see me.

this is what parenting often is:
regulating for our children until they can do it themselves.

children borrow calm from the adults around them. their nervous systems are still being shaped through relationship and repetition. when we soften, they follow. when we steady ourselves, their bodies remember how to settle.

this is why i believe so deeply in connection first, then correction.

correction can wait.
connection cannot.

learning doesn’t land in a body that feels unsafe.
growth doesn’t happen in a system that’s bracing.

what does help—what i return to again and again—is something small.

a breath.

inhale slowly through your nose for four.
pause gently for two.
exhale through your mouth for six, like fogging a mirror.

again.
and again.

it doesn’t fix everything.
but it tells the nervous system, you’re allowed to stand down for a moment.

sometimes i wish the world could do the same.

pause.
breathe.
let our systems catch up.

then move forward—not faster, but steadier.

it’s what i hope to offer my child.
what i remind my partner, and then he reminds me.
what i wish for every family, every teacher, every nervous system still holding more than it was meant to.

we don’t need to rush our healing.
we need to feel safe enough to begin.

and maybe—
if we start there—
we’ll find our way back to ourselves together.

♡ ᴄᴀʀᴍᴇʟ ʀᴏsᴇ
The Still Point