I Thought I Had It All…Til I Found Myself Carrying It All.

There was a season of my life where, from the outside, it looked like I had everything.

A beautiful family. Healthy kids. A healthy pregnancy. A home full of life. A beautiful apartment in a trendy neighborhood in Brooklyn. A partner I loved deeply and believed I was building a forever life with. A promising career I built from nothing. Community. Friends. A future that looked full, stable, and certain.

That was the version people saw. The version I wanted them to see—and at times, the version I wanted to believe.

But behind closed doors, I was exhausted, lonely, and overwhelmed. Most of it was invisible work—no receipts, no measurable financial contribution, nothing that would ever show up on paper or a spreadsheet. And yet it was real: emotional labor, logistical coordination, planning ahead while managing the constant demands of the present. What I didn’t say out loud was that I was carrying more and more of it on my own.

I was juggling a physically demanding business, a pregnancy at 40 carrying twins, and three young kids—one toddler needing everything and two teenage daughters who saw and understood everything—while trying to maintain a sense of myself and hold onto a marriage and a family that meant everything to me.

👩🏻‍🍳 Building Something From Nothing

At six months pregnant with my twins, I made the heartbreaking decision to shut down my catering company.

It was something I built completely from the ground up. Something I loved deeply. A part of me that existed outside of motherhood and marriage. I didn’t even know how to cook when I started—but through determination and grit, I built a successful business anyway.

On paper, and on Instagram, it looked like success.

But my body was breaking down in ways I couldn’t ignore anymore, and it was taking a real emotional and mental toll.

I was on my feet 14+ hours a day, seven days a week, prepping and cooking for over 100 people while carrying twins to full term. Lifting heavy equipment. Delivering across all the boroughs. Setting everything up and breaking it down on location. Constant output with no recovery. I was running on fumes.

It was survival disguised as productivity, and eventually my body made it clear I couldn’t sustain it anymore.

Closing my business brought physical relief, but emotional grief—because I was letting go of something that had made me feel capable, creative, and alive.

I remember feeling like a failure—more unseen, unvalued, and unloved than ever.

It was the first time I began to understand what it feels like to become invisible inside a life you are holding together.

😩 Postpartum and Survival Mode

After my twins were born, I struggled deeply with postpartum while recovering from a C-section, severe diastasis recti, and chronic back pain.

But there was no space to rest, recover, or heal.

My husband was increasingly emotionally distant and often physically absent, and I moved through pregnancy, postpartum recovery, parenting, and daily life without the support I thought would be there.

Beneath it all was the quiet heartbreak of a marriage that no longer felt like a partnership. So much of what should have been shared became mine alone.

I was responsible for twin infants, a busy toddler, and two teenage girls on my own.

Most days, I was just trying to make it from morning to night without falling apart in front of my kids.

I lived in exhaustion sleep couldn’t touch—emotions I couldn’t name, and questions I didn’t have language for.

I would often cry in the shower—the only place I could fully let go, even though I wasn’t alone.

Two infants in car seats in the bathroom with me, while a potty-training toddler called for me on the other side of the curtain as I stood under running water, trying to steady myself long enough to keep going.

I was holding everyone.

And all I wanted was someone to hold me.

🌪 The Collapse Into Isolation

Just when I thought I had reached the limit of what I could carry, COVID hit.

My husband was across the country and stayed there throughout lockdown. I found myself solo in Brooklyn with five kids, moving through a level of fear and isolation I had never experienced before.

The support systems disappeared overnight. The rhythm of life abruptly stopped. The world instantly shrunk to the size of our apartment. It was just me and the kids at home, isolated 24/7, with nowhere we were allowed to go.

Everything that was already heavy became heavier in the absence of a partner beside me.

That was the moment I stopped pretending I was okay.

COVID didn’t create it. It exposed it.

There was no more ambiguity. No more softening it. No more hoping it would change back.

My husband wasn’t there - and he wasn’t coming back into the role I had been holding space for.

And I had no choice anymore but to face what that meant:

I was on my own.

💔 The Grief Beneath It All

You see, a relationship doesn’t begin to unravel with divorce papers, and it doesn’t happen all at once. It starts quietly—long before anything is named.

The grief is complicated because you are not only grieving a relationship—you are grieving the partnership and the life you thought you were building together.

Some days I felt hurt and angry.
Some days I felt numb.
Some days I was paralyzed by sadness.
Some days I felt ashamed that I couldn’t handle it better.
Some days I felt completely worthless.
And some days the silence was so heavy I almost welcomed anything just to escape it.

And still, I kept showing up—for my children, for my life, for everything I was holding together.

💡 What I Know Now

For a long time, I thought strength meant carrying everything on my own.

But that wasn’t strength.
That was survival.

Strength, I’ve learned, is honesty.

It’s no longer pretending you’re okay when you’re not.
It’s saying: This is too much for one person.
It’s saying: I need support.

It’s knowing you are worthy of that support—and allowing yourself to receive it.

It’s also understanding that not all support is the same—and not settling for anything that doesn’t truly hold you.

And “having it all” is not a life that just looks impressive from the outside.

It’s a life where I am with the right people—a village that allows me to carry more, and to carry myself, because I am not carrying it alone anymore.

And what it comes down to is this:

I don’t just need to be held.

I need to be held well.

🌱 The Village

And that realization changed everything.

This is where I learned what a village is—a chosen family that doesn’t just witness my life, but helps hold it.

A village is not people who fix your life.
It is people who understand how to be with you in it.

People who understand that strength and softness can exist in the same body.
That exhaustion is not failure.
That being cared for is part of being human.
That connection doesn’t require perfection.
That someone can sit beside you in chaos without trying to fix you or it.

People who meet you with compassion instead of judgment.
Who see you clearly when you’re overwhelmed and don’t ask you to become smaller to be loved.
Who help you breathe again.
Who let you be fully yourself—and celebrate that.

People who step in when your arms give out.
Who take the baby when you’ve reached your limit.
Who sit beside you in the mess of it.
Who hold you while you cry and remind you that you don’t have to be strong all the time.
Who stay.

Because it takes a village not only to raise children—
it takes a village to hold the people raising them, too.

❤️ Super Siobhán