Yesterday my brain was loud—not panicked, not spiraling—just constantly running. Spinning. Trying to solve something that didn’t have a clean solution. I felt it in my body before I could fully name it. My ears hurt. My sinuses felt dry and full at the same time. That familiar am-I-getting-sick-or-am-I-just-exhausted feeling settled in, and lately I’m starting to believe it’s exhaustion finally demanding to be acknowledged.
I’m tired in a way that sleep doesn’t seem to touch.
Somewhere in the middle of that mental noise, Pinky and the Brain popped into my head, and it made me laugh. And then it made me pause—because the longer I sat with it, the more accurate it felt.
The Brain is hyper-intelligent, driven, convinced there’s a right plan and determined to execute it. Pinky appears chaotic and unfocused, but is emotionally intuitive, playful, sincere, and oddly wise. Together they aren’t at war. They’re a system.
Apparently, I am both.
I have more snark in my Pinky than I’d like to admit, and I am very much the Brain of this household. That dynamic didn’t start here. It didn’t begin with marriage or parenting or even adulthood. Somewhere in childhood, I learned that being observant, prepared, and emotionally regulated was how you stayed safe. You paid attention. You anticipated. You smoothed things out before they became problems.
I once saw a line on an Instagram Reel that made me laugh because it felt uncomfortably accurate:
Turns out if you get good grades and pretend to have it all together, they’ll let you raw dog ADHD until motherhood sends you into a full-blown burnout.
That’s me. And I know I’m not alone in that.
So I became the planner. The organizer. The navigator. The one who puts things where they function and remembers where everything lives. I’m also the person who is home all day, every day, which naturally made me the point person. This isn’t a story about a checked-out partner. Nick is engaged, attentive, and genuinely wants to help. This is a story about how I built a system that worked because I over-functioned inside it.
What I didn’t realize was how easily my brain became the external hard drive of this family. Not because anyone else is incapable, and not because of bad intentions, but because it became easier to ask me than to think it through. Over time, the thinking got outsourced. The effort got offloaded. When one person consistently knows, remembers, and anticipates, everyone else naturally leans on that.
My brain has excellent leadership skills and absolutely no concept of rest.
I see now that I didn’t just become the Brain of the household. I became the hem of the sweater—the part that holds everything together and keeps it from unraveling. I listened for what people needed before they asked. I noticed shifts in tone, mood, and energy. I adjusted. I stitched and restitched so everything could stay intact. And now I’m standing back and realizing how rarely that same attunement comes back toward me in the same way.
Part of this pattern is that I don’t ask for help. Not because help isn’t available, but because I learned early that needing less made life smoother. So I handle things. I take initiative. I do what needs to be done without waiting to be noticed.
This morning, that looked like me shoveling the driveway. I didn’t ask the teenagers to help, even though they were home on a delay. I didn’t pause to say, this is too much for me. I just started digging, managing a toddler at the same time, telling myself it would be quicker if I did it alone. And when it finally hit me that I needed help, what hurt wasn’t that help would have come—it was realizing how deeply ingrained it is for me not to ask or for them to want to help. To see me doing something that isn’t just for me. This is something for everyone in the house. That there was no consideration for how I would do this when everyone was gone and where they needed to be.
That realization landed on top of something else that was already tender.
What landed hardest recently wasn’t a big fight or a dramatic moment. It was realizing that when I share something vulnerable, it often gets reframed as insecurity or something to fix. When all I needed was for someone to say, I can see how that hurts you. Not a solution. Not logic. Just acknowledgment.
I’ve realized that I often soften the blow to cushion other people’s feelings—while I’m screaming inside.
Sometimes that softening shows up as sarcasm. It’s armor. It helps me regulate my own discomfort when I don’t feel safe staying open. I can see how it lands, and I take responsibility for that. I’m actively working to change it. What still hurts is how rarely anyone asks what was happening for me when I responded from that place.
This isn’t insecurity.
It’s a nervous system asking to be met before it has to protect itself.
Especially as a stay-at-home parent, even with a supportive partner, the loneliness can be quiet and hard to name. You spend your days managing needs, anticipating emotions, and problem-solving in real time, often without another adult in the room. So when you finally say I need something—when you finally allow yourself to be vulnerable or ask for help—and it gets reframed as something you need to work through alone, it hurts deeply. Not because the help isn’t there, but because the moment of being met is missed. And that can reopen wounds you’re actively trying to heal.
That kind of pain doesn’t stay abstract. It settles into the body. It shows up as tension that never quite releases, as ears that ache for no obvious reason, as sinuses that feel wrong but not sick enough to justify slowing down. It shows up as exhaustion so deep you start wondering if something is medically wrong, when really you’re just worn thin from carrying more than your share for too long.
I also don’t always allow myself to fully break down. My three-year-old feels everything I feel. If I cry, she cries. And suddenly I’m comforting her when what I need is to be comforted. I need a place to land. And my heart cracks open again because that place used to be my mother.
I want to be clear about this: this isn’t ingratitude. This isn’t unhappiness. I love my family. I find joy. I laugh. I notice beauty. All of these things coexist with grief, exhaustion, and the need to be seen. Strength doesn’t cancel out need.
What I’m learning is that when feelings don’t get met, they don’t disappear. They leak. Into tone. Into withdrawal. Into sarcasm. Into silence. Into a body that feels like it’s always bracing. Vulnerability met with logic instead of care trains the nervous system to stay alert, even when nothing is actively wrong.
So I regulate. I manage. I notice everyone else’s needs, moods, and emotional weather. And now I’m trying something new. I’m learning to pause instead of fix. To listen instead of translating feelings into action steps. To allow discomfort to exist without rushing it toward resolution. Not everything needs to be solved in order to be cared for.
I’m not trying to stop being the Brain. I’m trying to loosen my grip on being the only place the thinking, remembering, and emotional regulation are allowed to live. I know I helped create the system that exists in my family now, and I also know that means I have the power to change it. That change won’t be instant. Relearning rarely is.
I’m not unhappy all the time, and I’m not constantly overwhelmed. Most days, I function. I show up. I handle life. But sometimes something small gets touched—an old pattern, a missed moment—and it spirals not because the moment is big, but because it lands on something unresolved that’s been carried for a long time.
Maybe that’s what Pinky brings to the Brain—not chaos, but humanity. A reminder that presence matters more than perfection. That being seen is sometimes more healing than being fixed.
I’m not asking to be solved. I’m learning how to listen to my body, how to honor my needs before they spill over, and how to set some of my armor down without everything unraveling.
And honestly… that explains a lot.
Thank you for being here.
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