When you have a child with significant needs, as a parent you tend to live in a constant state of “flight, fight, or freeze”. Over time, you become so trained to always be ready for anything and everything. To wonder, to question, to over-prepare, so much so, that you lose the ability to truly be in the moment: to enjoy a quiet, peaceful minute, or make a decision on the fly without weighing every possible consequence.

My experience may mirror someone else’s, but it will never fully capture the depth of it all. The exhaustion of always being in survival mode. Because my story, my perspective, and my capacity are shaped by my child, by the unique challenges we face, and by how I have grown over time.

Today, the house is quiet. Everyone else is where they should be…at school, at work. And I am here, in the stillness, noticing how restless I feel as I begin the hard work of retraining my nervous system. Recently, another special needs mother said of her child being at school, “It is the longest stretch of trust I make all day.” That simple statement struck me with unexpected force.

It’s trust, or the lack of it, that keeps us in high alert. Not just trust in others, but trust in ourselves, in the world, in the moments when we have to let go. And perhaps that is the most difficult lesson of all: learning to trust again, bit by bit, even when your instincts scream to revert to survival mode.

There is no roadmap for this. No expert, no step-by-step guide. Trust grows quietly, in the small moments when we allow ourselves to breathe, when we notice success, when we let go; even just a little. It builds overtime, until the pause between panic and presence becomes just a little longer. And in those moments, we find fragments of freedom. Fragments of peace. Fragments of life beyond survival mode.

Parenting a child with significant needs is a lifelong lesson in patience, in vigilance, and in courage. But it is also a lesson in letting go, in believing, and in learning to trust…even when the flight, fight, or freeze is never far away.