Understanding Changes Everything

There was a time in my life when I thought understanding meant having all the answers. If I could just read enough... learn enough... try hard enough... surely I'd figure out how to become the version of myself that seemed to come so naturally to everyone else.

Spoiler alert… That didn't happen.

Instead, I got really good at collecting evidence. You know the kind...

Walking into Target for toothpaste and somehow leaving with a candle, new Magnolia décor you absolutely did not need, a birthday card you'll probably forget to mail, and a coffee... only to realize halfway home that you still don't own toothpaste.

Or deciding you're finally going to organize one closet, only to end up with every drawer in the house open, laundry somehow spread across three different rooms, Amazon delivering storage bins tomorrow, and the original closet looking exactly the same.

Please tell me I'm not alone.

To me, deep inside, all that was evidence that I couldn't get it together… that I wasn't disciplined enough and that everyone else seemed to know how to "adult" better than I did. I like to joke that all my issues make me funny, but the problem is that eventually hidden beneath that thick layer of humor... 

Shame.  

Shame is an incredible storyteller. It takes ordinary moments and quietly turns them into lifelong conclusions.

You forget to text your friend back → "I'm a terrible friend."

You start another project you don't finish → "See? You never follow through."

You lose your patience after asking your kids to put their shoes on for the seventeenth time →  "I'm failing at this whole parenting thing."

The facts themselves usually aren't what hurt us but it's the meaning we attach to them that does.  Somewhere along the way, we stop seeing moments… and start seeing verdicts.

There was melt downs over sock seams and clothing tags, complaints of stomach aches until we realized anxiety had been speaking long before they had the words for it. There were perfectionist meltdowns, big emotions that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and moments that didn't make much sense if you only looked at the initial outburst behavior.

I started trying to understand them. I read everything I could on nervous systems. Anxiety. Sensory processing. Emotional regulation. Executive functioning. And yes... eventually ADHD too. Not because I was looking for labels, but because I was looking for understanding.

What I didn't expect...was to keep bumping into myself.

Every chapter answered questions I didn't even realize I'd been carrying for years. Every new understanding about one of my children quietly became a new understanding about me. 

It wasn't one giant lightbulb moment.

It was more like someone slowly turning on the lights in a house I'd been living in my whole life. Room after room, things that had never made sense suddenly did. Understanding didn't change who I was but it changed the way I saw who I'd always been.

My life didn't suddenly become perfectly organized. Let’s be real-I still misplaced things, started projects that occasionally took... “creative detours”, and had days where my brain seemed determined to keep me humble. Oh yes, there is still plenty of chaos, but those moments stopped feeling like character flaws and instead they became information.

And let me tell you something- information is a whole lot lighter to carry than shame.

Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" I found myself asking, "I wonder what's actually happening here?"

Can you feel the difference here? One question begins with judgment and the other begins with curiosity. And curiosity has a funny way of making room for compassion.

Something else changed too.

The more understanding I found for myself, the more I found myself extending it to everyone else. I stopped seeing my daughter as "dramatic" over socks and started seeing a nervous system asking for help.

The sock didn't change. My child didn't change. But what changed was my understanding. 

And once that changed, my response changed too.

I've realized that's true far beyond parenting.

Consider the toddler melting down because you buckled them into the car seat before they got to do it themselves. Or the teenager who disappears into their room after school and answers every question with one word. Or maybe it's your spouse coming home unusually quiet, and before they've even set down their keys your brain has already written a story about why they're upset with you. Maybe it's the friend who still hasn't texted you back.

Sometimes those stories are true.

A lot of the time… they aren't.

Maybe the toddler isn't "being difficult" but rather they're learning independence and wanted to do it themselves. Maybe the teenager spent the entire day trying to hold it together and now needs some space in the safety of their own home. Maybe your spouse is carrying the weight of a day you know nothing about. Maybe your friend opened your message six different times, fully intending to answer every single one, and now it's been so long they don't know how.

(If you've ever done that... welcome. You're among friends.)

Understanding doesn't mean we stop having boundaries or excuse hurtful behavior. It simply reminds us that there's usually more to the story than the part we can see.

One of the biggest surprises in my own journey wasn't discovering ADHD. It was discovering how many people are quietly carrying stories about themselves that were written without all the information.

It doesnt matter if it ADHD, anxiety, grief, burnout, perfectionism... or  even something you haven't found words for yet. The details may be different, but the shame often sounds remarkably similar.

"I'm too much."

"I'm not enough."

"Why can't I just..."

The older I get, the less interested I become in writing quick stories about people—including myself. Because I've learned something I wish I'd known years ago: the first story our brain tells us isn't always the truest one. Sometimes it's simply the fastest one.

So maybe today, instead of asking,

"What's wrong with me?"

or

"What's wrong with them?"

we get just a little more curious and maybe we ask,

"What might I not understand yet?"

Because understanding doesn't always change the facts but sometimes it does change the story. And sometimes...

changing the story changes everything.

♡