More Than They Said We Could Be

Motherhood and Project 2025

Motherhood, for me, is not simple.
It’s beautiful — and it’s hard in ways that most people don’t see.

There are days my body is tired before the sun even rises.
Days my mind feels stretched too thin between the weight of survival, work, hope, advocacy, parenting, and exhaustion.
Days where emotions run louder than words, and everything feels heavy in my hands.

Motherhood with a high-needs child, when you yourself were once a high-needs child, is a kind of mirror you don’t always want to look into.
It is fierce.
It is endless.
It is sacred.

And it is nothing like the people in power want to pretend it is.

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When I hear people like RFK Jr. speak about children like mine — and children like I once was — as burdens, as losses, as proof that something has gone wrong... I feel that old familiar anger rise in my chest.

Because I know the truth they refuse to see:

I was one of those children.
High-needs. Sensitive. Loud and quiet at once.
Tired and dreaming at the same time.
Chaotic, complicated, emotional, defiant.

And despite the tiredness, despite the struggles — despite everything —
I grew up to be more than anything they said we couldn’t be.

I am not a burden.
I am not a tragedy.
I am not broken potential.

I am a mother.
I am a builder.
I am a fighter.
I am a voice rising from the very margins they tried to erase.

And my daughter?
She will grow up knowing she is already whole.

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Life is beautiful, yes — but it’s built in the middle of everything else: exhaustion, survival, fear, determination, joy, collapse, rebirth.

I am raising my daughter with hands that are still healing from how hard I had to fight just to get here.

Some days are hard in ways no one talks about —
the ways where exhaustion isn't just physical, but woven into your bones,
the ways where your child’s needs and your needs clash in a storm of overwhelmingness,
the ways where love is never the question, but capacity is.

There are days when the house is too loud,
days when my mind moves too fast and my body moves too slow,
days when I sit in the car outside for just a minute longer, just breathing, before I can come back inside and be everything she needs me to be.

And yet: we are here.

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When I hear men like RFK Jr. speak about children like mine — children who are sensitive, chaotic, neurodivergent, unpredictable — as a burden on society,
when I hear them speak about children like me — the messy, emotional, sometimes "too much" children — as "failures" or "evidence" of brokenness,
it hits a nerve I know too well.

Because I was that child once.

I was high-needs.
I was too loud or too quiet.
Too sensitive.
Too stubborn.
Too emotional.
Too complicated for the systems built for quiet, compliant children.

They wanted me to be easier, quieter, simpler.
They wanted me to shrink.
They thought that because I struggled — because I didn't move through the world in the "normal" way — I would never grow into anything worth building.

They were wrong.

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What they didn’t understand — what people like RFK Jr. still don’t understand — is that need is not weakness.

That complexity is not failure.
That struggling to survive is not proof you are less worthy of life, of dignity, of future.

They couldn’t see that children like me —
the ones they wrote off, the ones they pitied or feared —
grow up to be the kind of people who build worlds.

Because when you have lived at the margins,
when you have survived being misunderstood, unseen, dismissed, or despised —
you learn to create space.

You learn to build the kinds of places you never had.

You learn to become the person you needed.

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I am raising a child who is also complex.
Brilliant and chaotic.
Sensitive and stubborn.
Full of wonder, full of storms.

She is not easy to contain.
She is not designed to be easy to contain.

And I will not let the world tell her she is broken because she does not fit into the systems built by men who see complexity as failure.

I will not let her believe that high-needs means low-value.

I will not let her inherit the shame that was handed to me.

She will know, in her bones, that she was never the problem.

She will know that her existence is not a burden to the world — it is a blessing the world was not built to hold.

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That’s why Unity Harbour exists.
That’s why SkyStone Vale exists.

Not because we think the world will save us.
Not because we believe if we just wait long enough, someone will rescue us.

But because we know that if we want a place where the complicated, messy, brilliant, high-needs, neurodivergent, traumatized, beautiful people can not just survive but thrive —
we have to build it ourselves.

Piece by piece.
Land by land.
Story by story.

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When they said people like me would never be anything,
they didn’t realize something:

We were never trying to be anything for them.

We were always building something for each other.

They cannot see the future we are building,
because it does not center them.
Because it does not need their approval.

We are raising children who will not inherit their shame.
We are building places they cannot tear down.
We are becoming what they said we couldn’t.

And we are not done.

🧡 Carmen