Motherhood in the Firestorm
This is what it looks like to mother through madness.
One of my loved ones was spiralling again.
And I was at work.
Holding a phone in one hand, wiping tears with the other, crying on a colleague’s shoulder in between meetings, pretending to function. Smiling when required. Nodding through nonsense.
All while trying to keep her alive.
It’s the kind of moment you don’t post about.
You just survive it. Or you don’t.
She was sending me messages like:
“I just can’t breathe.”
“I’m losing my mind.”
“Please, just give me something to make it stop.”
I had already given her medication earlier.
And now she wanted more.
But I knew - if I gave her more, I wasn’t helping. I was enabling her.
And if I gave her nothing, I risked pushing her over the edge.
So I did what no mother wants to do.
I called 000.
And she begged me not to.
She said the hospital would make things worse.
That she’d feel more alone.
That I was making her more scared.
She said I escalated things.
But things had already escalated.
She just didn’t realise it. I did.
And I knew what she couldn’t see in that moment -
That not calling might cost her life.
And then I came home.
Hubby was watching TV.
Not asking. Not holding me. Not seeing me.
He knew something was happening.
But his concern didn’t stretch beyond the screen.
I was alone again, with the weight of a crisis that didn’t even belong to me fully, but it sure felt like mine.
I think that’s what broke me.
Not the crisis. Not the screaming. Not even the silence that followed.
But the fact that I was holding everything, and no one was holding me.
And I know I’m not the only one.
This is what it’s like to be the lifeline:
While your child is falling apart.
While your partner tunes out.
While your workplace asks you to “just push through.”
While you carry old wounds and fresh betrayals from people who once pretended to be allies.
This isn’t just a story about mental health.
This is a story about the unseen cost of survival.
Because I’m not just a mother. I’m not just a whistleblower. I’m not just someone who cries in silence at her desk.
I am someone who still stood up.
I chose life.
I chose the truth.
I chose boundaries.
And I chose to tell this story - not for sympathy, but because I know there are other mothers, carers, survivors, and lifelines reading this, thinking:
“How the hell am I still standing?”
You are.
We are.
We are the reckoning.