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The laundry pile sits between me and the hallway like a mountain I can’t name. Shirts half-folded, socks mismatched, towels damp from being washed again.
I stare at it as if it might move first.
My daughter calls from the kitchen, asking where her sports jersey is, and I can’t make my body answer.
I’m not procrastinating.
I’m frozen.
That distinction matters.
Because for mothers, especially neurodivergent mothers, what looks like forgetful or disorganized is often something deeper: the brain protecting itself. Protecting against too many steps, too many stimuli, too many expectations that promise no reward.
My body knows before my mind catches up: the laundry feels like a test I can’t pass.
The Hidden Weight We Carry
Every mother carries invisible labor. We are the quiet engines keeping households running: tracking the birthdays, remembering the snack sign-ups, soothing the meltdowns, keeping mental notes about which kid likes the blue cup and which one melts down if the toast is cut wrong.
But for neurodivergent mothers, invisible labor collides with executive dysfunction. What another mom calls “just one quick load of laundry” might feel to us like an unsolvable equation. What’s “just reply to that email” becomes a boss-fight between our willpower and our wiring.
It isn’t laziness. It’s the collision of:
Executive dysfunction (the brain’s initiation and sequencing center misfiring under pressure)
Time blindness (a fog where minutes and hours dissolve)
Monotropism (focus that clings to what’s interesting but slips off what’s not)
Trauma physiology (a nervous system that goes into freeze when overstimulated or under-supported)
By the time most women are diagnosed with ADHD or autism, we’ve already spent decades inside the shame spiral punishing ourselves for what our bodies could never quite do.
Research shows women are diagnosed several years later than men. That means several years of stories about being “flaky,” “messy,” “too much,” “not enough.”
When the freeze hits, it’s not just the laundry pile. It’s the ripple through everything else: my kids’ morning routine, my ability to show up at work, my sense of competence. The myth of the “good mom” turns every undone task into a moral failure.
The Freeze in Real Time
Freeze isn’t quiet. It hums through a household like static.
>> It looks like opening and closing the same school email 10 times because you can’t bring yourself to answer.
>> It looks like dinner ingredients half-prepped and abandoned when the recipe feels impossible.
>> It looks like bedtime routines started late because the first step getting up is too much.
>> It looks like washing the same load of laundry three times because you forgot to dry it.
Freeze disguises itself as forgetfulness, but it’s really self-protection. The brain saying: this is too much, too fast, too many demands at once.
The shame follows close behind. Every ND mother knows the inner monologue:
Every other mom can do this. Why can’t I?
That shame isn’t data, it’s conditioning. It’s what happens when a capitalist, patriarchal culture tells women their worth depends on efficiency. When a mother’s love is measured by her productivity, freeze becomes rebellion.
A Moment in My Own Motherhood
There was a morning last winter when my son couldn’t find his clean jeans. He started to cry; I felt my throat close. I knew there were clean jeans somewhere in that mountain of laundry, but I couldn’t move to find them. I wanted to. I just…couldn’t.
My nervous system had hit its capacity.
I watched him stomp away in frustration, and the guilt gutted me. I could hear my mother’s voice, the one that lives in my head, telling me to get it together, to stop making excuses. But I wasn’t making excuses. I was living inside the aftershocks of decades spent bracing.
I masked my way through college and law school, holding everything together while unraveling inside. I became the mother who remembered everyone’s appointments except her own, the one who fought for her kids’ IEPs while neglecting her own regulation. I could advocate fiercely for my children, but I couldn’t always advocate for the exhausted woman folding laundry at midnight.
The Double Bind
Many ND mothers are raising ND children. That means we are managing two nervous systems, our own and our child’s, while trying to stay regulated enough to do both.
We coach our kids through their morning routines while silently fighting our own freeze.
We remember their therapy appointments but forget our own.
We fight for their accommodations while running on caffeine and self-doubt.
The world expects us to parent like neurotypical mothers, inside systems that weren’t designed for us. The “good mom” ideal assumes regulation, access, and support we were never given.
Maternal ADHD is linked with higher parenting stress, not because mothers care less, but because the structures around them are inaccessible (Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2008).
It’s not a lack of love. It’s a lack of scaffolding.
Reimagining What Support Looks Like
For a long time, I believed I just needed more discipline, better time management, a stronger morning routine. But every “mom hack” collapsed under the same truth: my nervous system doesn’t respond to punishment; it responds to safety.
What I needed wasn’t a new planner. I needed accessibility.
Now, when I approach a task, I ask: What would make this feel safe and possible?
>> Sometimes that means breaking the task into a Minimum Viable Step, just taking the chicken out of the fridge instead of “making dinner.
>> Sometimes it’s externalizing the steps on a sticky note so my brain can see the sequence instead of holding it in working memory.
>> Sometimes it’s lighting a candle, putting on music, or inviting a friend to body-double on Zoom while I answer emails.
These are not indulgences. They’re adaptive strategies for a nervous system designed differently. Just as ramps make schools accessible for wheelchairs, scaffolds make daily life accessible for neurodivergent families.
When I use them, the freeze loosens. When my kids use them, I see their confidence grow. Together, we start to build a rhythm that honors how our brains actually work.
The Somatic Bridge
Before any of the logistics, I’ve learned to pause and check my body.
If I imagine forgetting a permission slip, where does the shame live?
In my throat? My stomach? My chest?
I place a hand there and whisper: This is data, not a moral verdict.
That’s somatic intelligence the body’s way of translating what the mind can’t fix. When the body feels safe, the brain can sequence again. When we soothe first, executive function follows.
It’s the opposite of what the culture teaches. We’ve been told to regulate through control: breathe, smile, get it together. But real regulation starts with belonging to our own bodies first.
A Cultural Reframe
Maybe the “good mom” isn’t the one who keeps up. Maybe she’s the one who listens when her system says enough.
What if motherhood wasn’t a performance of regulation but an experiment in repair?
Every time I soften instead of push, my kids witness it. They learn that love isn’t in the perfection of the morning routine; it’s in the mercy we extend to ourselves when the system falters.
When I finally fold the laundry, it’s not triumph; it’s recovery. It’s proof that rest and repair make function possible.
The Science of Mercy
The data supports what our bodies already know:
>> Scaffolds improve task initiation and follow-through in ADHD adults (Knouse & Safren, 2010).
>> Trauma-informed strategies reduce freeze and improve daily capacity (van der Kolk, 2014).
>> Monotropism-aware environments help both parents and children feel less overwhelmed and more connected (Murray et al., 2005).
In other words: this isn’t about trying harder. It’s about designing differently.
Our operating systems aren’t broken; they just need different architecture.
Unlearning the Myth
The myth of the “good mom” is a moving target built on regulation privilege. It tells us love looks like endless patience, organization, and availability qualities that depend on a regulated nervous system and abundant support.
But what if our worth was never tied to output?
What if the truest version of mothering was one that accounted for difference—for the ways we freeze, flare, or fragment under pressure—and treated those patterns not as failures, but as invitations to care differently?
Freeze isn’t failure. It’s information. It’s your body saying: I need a gentler way.
Returning to the Laundry
Eventually, I walk back to the hallway. The pile is still there, but something in me has shifted.
I start small: sort the towels. Then the socks. My son wanders in, humming, and begins folding a shirt beside me. I don’t tell him how to do it. I just let the rhythm return.
The laundry gets done not because I forced myself, but because I softened enough to begin.
Motherhood isn’t about getting everything right. It’s about finding our way back to movement after the freeze.
Somatic Invitation
Take a breath.
Place your hand on your belly.
Whisper:
I am not a broken mother.
I am building a different system.
When we parent from that truth, the shame loses its power. We stop performing perfection and start modeling repair.
Because maybe the real “good mother” isn’t the one who never drops the ball, but the one who, when she freezes, finds a way to thaw with grace.
~
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