There are days when I look around and wonder how we are possibly doing it all.
Motherhood. Two children. Home education. Working as a nurse. Running a home. Building a clothing brand from the ground up. Trying to remember appointments, meals, laundry, deadlines, emails, orders, schoolwork and all the little things that somehow seem to multiply overnight.
And somewhere amongst all of that, trying to look after myself too.
Life in our family isn’t particularly quiet or predictable. It can be chaotic, overwhelming, loud, emotional and exhausting. But it is also full of creativity, connection, laughter and learning.
And perhaps one of the biggest things I’m learning is that chaos doesn’t always mean we’re doing something wrong.
Learning doesn’t always look like sitting at a desk
Home education has taught me to completely rethink what learning actually means.
Some days we might sit down and work through structured lessons. Other days, that just isn’t happening.
Sometimes learning happens through a conversation in the kitchen. Through cooking. Through a trip somewhere. Through following an intense interest for hours. Through asking a hundred questions. Through figuring out why something works. Through a difficult conversation about emotions.
And sometimes, learning looks like taking the pressure off completely.
I’ve had to let go of the idea that education has to look a certain way to be valuable.
Neurodivergent children don’t necessarily learn best when they’re forced into a rigid system. Sometimes they need movement, breaks, repetition, curiosity and the freedom to approach something differently.
And honestly, so do I.
Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual
Parenting two children while navigating neurodivergence has taught me that there is no perfect way to do motherhood.
There are days when everything feels beautifully organised.
And then there are days when everyone is dysregulated, someone can’t find their shoes, nobody wants the food I’ve made, the washing machine is full, I have work later and I’ve completely forgotten why I walked into the room.
Those days can feel like failure.
But I’m learning to stop measuring myself against an imaginary version of motherhood where everything runs smoothly.
Our family doesn’t need perfect.
We need understanding.
We need flexibility.
We need patience.
And sometimes we just need everyone to survive the day and start again tomorrow.
Then there’s nursing
Working as a nurse adds another layer.
Nursing requires focus, responsibility, emotional energy and the ability to care for other people when you’re already tired.
I can spend hours caring for other people, supporting families and trying to make someone else’s difficult day a little easier.
Then I come home and I’m still Mum.
There isn’t always a clear boundary between work and home. Sometimes I’m exhausted before I’ve even walked through the front door.
But nursing has also taught me so much about people.
It has reminded me that everyone has a story. That behaviour is communication. That people can be struggling with things you cannot see.
Those lessons have inevitably changed the way I parent, too.
And then I decided to build a clothing brand…
Because apparently everything else wasn’t enough.
Creating a clothing brand came from something deeply personal: recognising how difficult clothing can be when you’re neurodivergent.
The textures. The seams. The labels. The weight. The fit. The sensory overload.
I wanted to create clothing that understood those experiences rather than expecting people to simply tolerate them.
But building a brand while being a mum, home educating and working as a nurse isn’t exactly straightforward.
There are ideas at midnight.
Messages while trying to get everyone fed.
Design decisions between everything else.
Website problems when I should probably be sleeping.
Packing orders.
Creating content.
Learning things I never expected to have to learn.
Some days I feel like a business owner.
Some days I’m a teacher.
Some days I’m a nurse.
Most days I’m a mum.
And occasionally I’m all of them at once.
I’m learning that I don’t have to do everything perfectly
For a long time, I thought being overwhelmed meant I wasn’t coping.
Now I’m starting to see it differently.
Maybe overwhelm is sometimes just what happens when you’re carrying a lot.
Maybe the answer isn’t always to become better at carrying everything.
Maybe sometimes we need to put something down.
That might mean changing the way we home educate.
Taking a slower day.
Saying no.
Leaving the laundry.
Taking a break.
Asking for help.
Or accepting that something can be good enough.
I’m learning that productivity isn’t a measure of my worth.
And neither is how tidy my house is.
We’re learning together
One of the most unexpected parts of raising a neurodivergent family is realising that I’m learning alongside my children.
We’re learning how our brains work.
We’re learning what helps when we’re overwhelmed.
We’re learning that needing a break isn’t something to be ashamed of.
We’re learning that sensory needs are real.
We’re learning how to communicate when emotions are too big.
We’re learning that different doesn’t mean less.
And perhaps most importantly, we’re learning that we don’t have to fit ourselves into someone else’s definition of what a successful family looks like.
We can create our own.
It might be messy.
It might be unconventional.
It might look completely different from everyone else’s.
But it’s ours.
Finding the beauty in the chaos
There is a strange kind of beauty in our chaos.
The spontaneous conversations.
The random facts I’m expected to know.
The interests that consume the entire house for weeks.
The laughter.
The cuddles.
The creativity.
The days when absolutely nothing goes according to plan but somehow end up being the best days.
I’m learning to stop waiting for life to become less chaotic before I allow myself to enjoy it.
Because maybe this is the life we’re building.
Not a perfectly organised one.
Not a conventional one.
But one where our children can be themselves, where learning can happen everywhere, where sensory needs are respected, where Mum can have big dreams too, and where we can all grow together.
I’m still figuring it out.
Some days I feel like I’ve got it.
Other days I absolutely do not.
We’re not supposed to have it all figured out.
We’re learning through the chaos.
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