Grief doesn't announce itself politely.
It shows up uninvited, in the middle of a workday, in the hallway between meetings, in the silence after a feeding, when your hands are full and your heart is already heavy.
When both of my parents became terminally ill, my life split down the middle. Half of me was in hospital rooms—learning medications, managing symptoms, holding their hands through the unbearable. The other half was wiping sticky toddler hands, teaching phonics to my students, and faking smiles so no one would worry. I was in my twenties, with a one-year-old on my hip, a three-year-old who needed bedtime stories, and two dying parents who still needed their daughter.
There was no blueprint for this. No manual for how to be everything for everyone while quietly falling apart.
So if you're reading this while balancing caretaking, work, motherhood—or all three—this is for you.
You're allowed to not be okay. I became an expert in emotional compartmentalization. One moment I was helping my mother sip water through a straw. An hour later, I was standing in front of a classroom pretending I hadn't just cried in the car. At home, I put on my "fun mom" voice for my babies. They didn't need my pain. And I didn't give myself space to feel it.
You don't have to pretend it's fine. You don't have to keep performing. Your grief, your overwhelm—they deserve space, too.
Survival mode isn't failure. It's strategy. I lived on hospital coffee and adrenaline. I skipped meals, skipped showers, skipped sleep. It felt like weakness at the time—but it wasn't. It was a kind of radical endurance. When you're caregiving and working, you're not failing if you don't fold the laundry. You're surviving. That's enough.
The goal isn't thriving. It's breathing.
Feed the kids. Show up to the meeting. Take one deep breath. That counts.
Ask for help—even if you don't know how. People said, "Let me know what you need." But I didn't know what I needed. So I smiled and said, "We're okay." We weren't. Eventually, I started saying yes—to help, to favors, to grace. When someone offers to lighten your load, don't let pride or guilt say no. Let them carry a corner of what's crushing you.
You're more than what you hold together. Being "the strong one" comes with a quiet kind of pressure. People see you functioning, showing up, handling it—and they assume you're okay. But they don't see what's underneath: the mental gymnastics of pretending you're fine when you're not. The exhaustion that doesn't go away with one good night of sleep. The way you start to disappear into the role of caretaker, teacher, parent, protector—without anyone noticing that
you're the one who needs support.
I forgot who I was outside of the responsibilities. And honestly, I didn't have the time or energy to even think about what I needed.
But eventually—when the noise started to quiet, when the hardest parts passed—I realized something important:
I was still in there. Maybe not the exact version of me from before. But a version that still mattered. One who had been through more than she thought she could handle and was still standing.
If you're in the thick of it right now, you don't need to find yourself overnight. You just need small moments that are yours. A real meal. A walk. A break. A conversation where you don't have to be "on."
Start there. Let it be enough. Because you are not just what you do for others. You're not just the glue holding everything together. You're a person who deserves time, rest, and care, too.
It's not selfish to come back to yourself—it's necessary.
And it's okay if that takes time.
You're allowed to heal slowly.
— Kristel (TA Operations)
Joanna (TA Co-founder)
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